Text by Mary O’Grady; Photos by Deb Ford
Lynn Reuter and Mary O’Grady recently completed the Wisconsin Master Naturalist training program held this past Spring. Course participants are required to produce a Capstone project in either environmental education/interpretation, stewardship or citizen science. For their project, Lynn and Mary chose to update the booklet that park visitors use on a self-guided tour of the Upland Trail’s forest past and present.
On the trail there are twelve numbered posts. Each number corresponds to a description in the booklet of what a visitor is seeing at that location on the trail. Most of the posts are in front of trees, where others indicate what is nearby in that area. One of the posts needed to be replaced and another repositioned.
The Upland Trail guide was first researched and written some thirty years ago by then-park naturalist Coggin Heeringa. Lynn and Mary kept the history, or Reflections, as they now call it, the same but completely rewrote the present. With keeping the changing seasons in mind, they decided to rewrite the descriptions for any time of year that a visitor might hike the trail. NWS financed the printing of the new guide.
For Wilderness Days, our annual September celebration of Newport State Park, Mary led 25 hikers along the Upland Trail and introduced the updated interpretative trail guide. Here are some photos from that event.
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