Natural Connections: In The Dark

Light from the dining hall at Upham Woods Outdoor Learning Center spilled out, down the hill, under the pines, and onto the bank of the Wisconsin River, where a handful of environmental educators were waiting for a night hike to begin.

I almost hadn’t joined the group. This was the final night of the Wisconsin Association of Environmental Education annual conference, and I had a long drive home the next day. Being sleepy for that wouldn’t be ideal. But it had been years since I’d been on a night hike, and I didn’t want to miss out.

“Have you ever been on a night hike?” asked one of the activity leaders, who were all graduate students at UW-Stevens Point. “Hasn’t everybody?” asked one young woman, who, by way of explanation, told harrowing tales of following her big brother into the dark for numerous childhood adventures. In this organized context, a few of us explained, night hike means something a little more educational…and safe.

I’d become adept at leading night hikes when I worked at a science camp in the redwoods of Sonoma County, California. The combination of few mosquitoes and temperatures that rarely dropped below freezing made being outside at night there far more pleasant than most of my midwestern experiences. Each week, I’d have a new trail group of 15 to 20 fifth or sixth graders, often from a big city. Each week, I’d take the kids on a night hike where we’d spend an hour or so experiencing the night and doing little experiments to highlight animal adaptations to darkness. I loved it. I’d never stopped to consider how the students felt, though.

After a quick introduction in the light of the dining hall, the hike facilitators led us down a trail. The tread was wide and flat, and I relished the chance to practice my old technique of “seeing with my feet” by placing my steps carefully and sensing where the packed trail became soft edge. At a wide spot, we paused and gathered in a circle.

The instructors introduced the idea of predators using their sense of smell to find prey in the dark. Then they passed out little paper envelopes filled with something scented. There were three packets of each different scent, they told us. Our job was to find all of the people with the same scent. No flashlights allowed!

I sniffed my own envelope, and discovered what was definitely a flavor of tea leaves. Maybe vanilla chai? This immediately brought back memories of raiding the tea selection in my camp’s dining hall to freshen up my set of paired scents. Back then, I had explained the activity as male moths finding females by following their airborne pheromones, but it was basically the same.

As I milled around the Upham Woods group sniffing everyone’s packets to find a match, my nose quickly became overwhelmed. This was harder than I expected! I wondered if the tea scents I’d chosen back in the day had been as distinct to the kids as they’d been to me when I was choosing them in the well-lit dining hall?

Flashlights snapped on again as we started moving farther down the trail. My first reaction was to be frustrated. I’d always loved the challenge—and then the awareness gained—from walking without a light. But as the trail grew rougher, and the drop-off grew steeper, I softened my opinion of the lights, and made sure to fall into step near someone who’d remembered to bring a flashlight. Walking in the dark had been a lot easier on familiar trails.

We hiked for a while, making a few more stops before finding ourselves back in the yard of the learning center dorms. We were instructed to partner up, and choose which one of us was predator, and which was prey. Meanwhile, a grad student set up a playing field with orange cones at the four corners and stuffed animals scattered around. The activity facilitator was holding blindfolds.

This wasn’t an activity I recognized, and for a second, a touch of anxiety bubbled up. I was glad to have a friend nearby who I could trust as a partner, but still I worried. What would we have to do while blindfolded? Would I succeed? Would I be safe? And then I wondered—is that how my students felt back in the redwoods? Did I make them nervous with my odd activities that I thought were so fun? In the end, my friend and I came up with a code of chickadee calls for the sighted partner to direct the blindfolded one to pick up the stuffed animals. We didn’t win the game, but our system worked, and we had fun.

As all the night hikers formed a circle to wrap up the experience, the leaders asked us what we’d learned. The science wasn’t new to me, and most of the activities weren’t unfamiliar either, but I still learned something big: empathy. The experience of being in control of a night hike in familiar territory was far different than being a participant in a new place. Next time I lead a night hike, I’ll make sure that my students aren’t quite so in the dark.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.