The Outdoor Insider
MAINE OUTDOOR SCHOOL'S QUARTERLY E-NEWSLETTER
The Outdoor Insider Archive
ISSUE #27
JULY 2023
Most people know that getting outside is healthy and fun, but struggle with meaningfully bringing nature’s benefits into their personal lives, classrooms, or organizations. That’s where we come in.
From Ellsworth to Jonesport, students young and older explored nature through field trips, hikes, OWLette camp, and schoolyard observations this quarter!
Co-Founders' Note:
“In nature, everything has a job. The job of the fog is to beautify further the existing beauties!” — Mehmet Murat ildan
Spending so much of our lives outdoors has us especially in tune with the weather and seasonal patterns. We didn’t need the newspaper to tell us June was the rainiest here in over 25 years–we noticed! Along with the literal fog that marked the last month, the whole past quarter has been a blur of programming–our busiest yet. But through the fog, we must remember to rest and reflect so we can see those beauties within! We reached about 500 students in the last quarter ranging from 5-80-year-olds! Each person spent time outside in a huge range of weather looking closely at the beauty of nature and asking questions about it. What could be better?
As one OWLette camper said on a particularly foggy day hiking along the coast, “If we only went hiking on sunny days, we wouldn’t be able to see these amazing spider webs and trees covered in beautiful water droplets!”
Now when the sunshine comes, we’ll appreciate it all the more, won’t we?
~Hazel and Joe
Tracks:
Finished regular school year programming at 14 different schools this year!
Completed our first Fish Friends season as team coordinators for the Maine Council of the Atlantic Salmon Federation with about 86 participating schools across the state.
Held our second Orienteering Course with Women for Healthy Rural Living.
Led a family-friendly Spring Observations hike with Blue Hill Public Library and Downeast Audubon.
OWL-Outdoor Women Lead outings occurred at Tunk Mountain near Franklin, Tide Mill Creek in Jonesboro, and Klondike Mountain in Lubec.
Grasshoppers Outdoor School students learned about what to do if they get lost or hurt in the wilderness, vernal pools, stream ecology, and edible evergreens.
Guided three customized experiences for private groups large and small.
Spoke on WERU’s Talk of the Towns: Take it Outside, Maine educators teaching out of doors episode.
Began our Summer Naturalist Series on Mount Desert Island with The Naturalist’s Notebook and learned about birds and bugs!
Led a workshop for life science teachers at Woodlawn Museum.
Had another amazing year at OWLette Camp with 15 girls ages 11-14 with Women for Healthy Rural Living.
Enjoyed a great fundraising event at Fogtown Brewing Company for our OWL Outing Club.
Started Summer School outdoor programming at Trenton Elementary School.
Received applications for a new Naturalist Educator to join our team!
Check out the “MOS in the News” page to see where we’ve shown up in the press!
Community Commendations:
Claire leading a field trip at Branch Lake Public Forest in Ellsworth.
We bid a fond farewell to a dear member of the Maine Outdoor School team over the past year, Naturalist Educator and Certified Interpretive Guide Claire Adams.
Claire joined us last August and enriched us with her extensive background in conservation and environmental education, impeccable organizational skills, and absolutely delicious baked goods. Before she bid us adieu, she even took the extra time to organize and label our teaching supplies better and created a digital folder of outdoor lesson plans and activities organized by subject and age group that will serve us for years to come. Claire has been a fabulous teammate and educator, and we were very fortunate to have her for the 2022-23 school year.
“Claire was great! The content and the way in which she taught it meshed well with the learning styles of my students. She was very patient with an active group of students. She communicated very well with me as we worked around various scheduling conflicts. I think she excelled in review of content taught previously, while connecting it to other parts of the program.” -elementary school teacher Claire worked with this year
Claire is relocating to New Hampshire this summer, and we wish her great success on this and all her future endeavors!
Biomimicry:
Special edition written by Lamoine 6th-graders! Here’s hoping you enjoy some summer traveling adventures like salmon do.
Have you ever wondered what is in the Maine rivers? Well there is an endangered species of salmon swimming around. That species is the north Atlantic salmon. Something that is interesting about them is that they are considered anadromous because they lay their eggs in fresh water, travel to the ocean to mature, and travel back to the same river to lay eggs and DIE!!! This species is so amazing because not a lot of other animals can survive such a big journey as this amazing fish!
A female salmon can deposit up to 4,000 to 10,000 eggs with only 1 percent surviving to the next generation. Salmon can jump up to two meters to cross obstacles in the rivers which is the same height some olympic athletes can jump. Salmon often travel 50 kilometers. This is equivalent to running a marathon every day!! The only remaining wild populations of U.S. Atlantic salmon are found in a few rivers in Maine.
This edition of Biomimicry is an adaptation of an episode of The Nature of Phenology, a radio show that Hazel and Joe produce weekly for WERU-FM. You can read or listen to entire past episodes here and enjoy the full episode that Lamoine 6th-graders wrote and performed about salmon here and one on ospreys here.
This edition of Biomimicry is an adaptation of an episode of The Nature of Phenology, a radio show that Hazel and Joe produce weekly for WERU-FM. You can read or listen to entire past episodes here.
Resilience Tip:
“Children today can recognize 1,000 corporate logos but as few as 10 plants native to their area. This imbalance is not surprising when kids spend as many as seven hours a day in front of screens and less than 10 minutes on average outside in unstructured play.”
Maine Outdoor School is leading three summer camps this summer where participants will learn how to identify at least 10 native species!
Learn more about this study here.
What's Upstream:
Look forward to 8 more sessions of our Summer Naturalist Series on Mount Desert Island featuring topics including fungi, flowers, and seeds.
Join our two upcoming canoeing outings (⅞ and 7/15) with Women for Healthy Rural Living.
Register now for our upcoming Wild & Free camp on Great Cranberry Island with YWCA MDI.
Support our Summit for a Cause participants hiking Katahdin with us in August.
Join our hike all about moss with Downeast Coastal Conservancy in August (info to come)
Take your canoeing skills to the next level with an overnight canoe trip on Tunk Lake while raising money for a good cause
For more info and to register for all the above visit our Events page.