Week Three – Thankful! Appreciating special guest faculty this week Jamie Fershinger, Nick Balster, Jason Miller and Chrissy Hanke. Living in the boundary layer; it’s all about water if you’re a moss; Acrocarps, Pleurocarps… Spodosols, Histosols, a little clay goes a long way, marl at The Cove! And field learning on land management. Whew!

Week Two – terrific! Thanks to special guest faculty this week Alfonso Morales, Russell Rolffs, Alessandra Simmons Rolffs, Gathering Ground, and Jason Miller. Plus poet Sarah Nance, Write On, Door County. Historical maps, a little printmaking, some extemporaneous speaking, explorations of justice in ecological restoration, planting trees and shrubs and learning hazelnut layering, RCG management, and native wetland seeding.

We are so proud that the Fund for Lake Michigan, who has funded ecological restoration work at Crossroads at Big Creek, has featured the Land Restoration School on their landing page. Read the full article here or here.

The article begins,

Do you know people with a passion for healing the earth?

They’ve got ideas for change. They embody and are committed to diversifying environmental fields. What they need: ecological restoration knowledge and skills. Enter the Land Restoration School (LRS) at Crossroads at Big Creek in Sturgeon Bay. The LRS is excited to launch its inaugural session this summer with a cohort of seven future ecological restorationists.

Week One has been fantastic! Thanks to special guest faculty this week Chris Young, August Ball, Mike Grimm, Jason Miller… and a red-backed salamander or two.

“Honesty and humility are necessary attributes if you wish to explore nature from a scientific lens.” — Martina Patterson, LRS 2022

“Maps tell many kinds of stories. They can summarize a situation, trace a route, and show change over time. They can examine causes and effects and reveal interrelationships. They can help people make plans, predict or model the future, and support decisions.” (Telling Stories with Maps: A White Paper, esri.com)

We love map stories! The LRS classroom (see photos) is an expression of that. Some stories are written by the likes of Sylvester Sibly, a surveyor in the 1830s that trod across all of Door County, showing wetlands, stream crossings, vegetation character (his maps are housed in Madison at the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands and available online). The Original Vegetation of Wisconsin (aka “the Finley map”) is based on those records. Many other complex stories of soil maps, bedrock maps, groundwater maps, wetland maps are found at Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey. Its director, State Geologist Ken Bradbury, is one of LRS guest faculty in July. 

Maps are invaluable in ecological restoration planning and implementation. Maps can be beautiful and effective visual communication tools – a way to convey complex information in understandable ways. The Crossroads’ Ecological Restoration plan (found on the Land Restoration School Science page) includes several maps.

One of the 2022 LRS cohort, Andrew Umentum, is also a map-maker who sees things from a fresh angle (see Andrew’s website). Two of Andrew’s maps are in the LRS classroom. They remind me of the well-known ‘Big Block of Cheese' episode of The West Wing, where Cartographers for Social Equality explain that “using the Mercator map projection over-represents the countries of the North to the detriment of those of the South”.

But really, we just love maps.

By Dan Collins

On Tuesday, May 31, 2022 the Land Restoration School will begin the field work season of our inaugural year. We’re calling these two weeks ‘shoulder season’, the field work leading up to the LRS academic session. In the process, the earth will continue to tilt on its axis, but now with more carbon-coveting trees, more habitat-improved acres and more energized ecological restorationists. Come see the boots on the ground; native seeds cast all around; trowels will be lost – then found; thirteen-lined squirrels will nap underground; the herons we hope to astound; and you at the campfire – we will see you around. “Peace” – said the toad holding the “e” sound as long as they could. “Breathe”, said the yellow-legged frog.

The Land Restoration School would like you to meet our Curriculum Chair, Chris Young. Watch Chris’ May 4th talk at Crossroads, Where Restoration Begins (thank you to Laddie Chapman for Sevastopol TV).

Chris has been exploring the natural world as long as he can remember, starting on a small farm west of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. He earned a B.A. in biology with a minor in English from Hamline University. His Ph.D. is from the University of Minnesota’s Program in the History of Science and Technology. He lived and taught in the Pacific Northwest before moving to Milwaukee. He is an author and editor. Chris is Project Manager of the Urban Ecology Center Institute in Milwaukee, Affiliated Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Professor Emeritus of Biology at Alverno College.

Throughout his career in higher education, Chris has taught courses that focus on evolution, climate change, environmental history, the natural history of the Pacific Northwest, the natural history of urban green spaces in Milwaukee, and social impacts of science, as well as introductory biology and science methods for teachers.

(see Peninsula Pulse press coverage; read Door County Advocate article)

Crossroads at Big Creek is pleased to announce the establishment of a Land Restoration School to provide an educational immersion in the principles, practices and planning of ecological restoration for degraded lands. 

The LRS will meet at Crossroads at Big Creek in Sturgeon Bay. Participants may include those honing or re-directing their college experience, those following a non-college learning path or those seeking a career change. All participants will share a goal of working in ecological restoration or an affiliated field. 

Crossroads approached Dan Collins and Nancy Aten to be founding directors of the LRS. Aten and Collins, owners of Landscapes of Place, are well-known for their decades of conservation work in the Door County community. “The Land Restoration School responds to a need in Door County and beyond,” said Aten. “For the well-being of our communities and the earth and to combat climate change and habitat destruction, we need to teach and share the knowledge of how to reclaim and restore degraded lands, and we need skilled people doing this critical work.” 

LRS is glad to share the news that 2022 cohort restorationist, Martina Patterson, is an artist in the 2022 Wisconsin Triennial, Ain’t I A Woman, at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibit runs April 23 through October 9, 2022.

From the MMoCA exhibit overview: “The Wisconsin Triennial, a cornerstone of the Museum’s curatorial programming, is known as a celebration of the breadth and range of artistic practices in the state…

Learn more about the artists, including Martina. Congratulations, Martina.

By Dan Collins

I took short walk today and was renewed to see the tiny cotyledon leaves of the false mermaid (Floerkea proserpinacoides) on the wet forest floor. A tiny wispy little plant that has a very small flower, but as a colony will create an early dramatic bright green expanse on the floor of a beech maple woods. The green expanse will only persist for a few weeks, but in that time each plant will produce the most enormous seeds (1/10”) for a plant of its size. False Mermaid will only make a few seeds per plant, but in each seed is the very biggest investment that the plant can possibly make.

The Land Restoration School at Crossroads at Big Creek is pleased to announce our guest faculty for the 2022 inaugural term. We are inspired that these faculty members care deeply about both education and ecology. We believe every session will challenge our restorationists/students as they form strong connections between the natural science topics and the important work in front of them.

Our faculty, led by our curriculum coordinator Chris Young, has described the framework of learning outcomes for the LRS as follows.