Tag: hiking

Spring Wildflowers at the Shaw Nature Reserve

Spring blooms (possibly of Royal Catchfly -- Silene regia) at the Shaw Nature Reserve

I took a half-day trip during spring break (somewhere around the 31st) to the Shaw Nature Reserve in Gray Summit. I was hoping to find some books on native, Missouri, flora and fauna, and see if the Reserve would be a good place for a field trip (they have sleeping facilities so even overnight trips are a possibility).

I found a number of books, including a nice one on mushrooms, and while I could have, I did not pick up one on wildflowers (of which there were several). Of course, spring is the perfect time to see wildflowers, especially since we ended up hiking the Wildflower Trail, so I’m probably going to have to go back sometime soon.

The lady at the main office (where you pay $5/adult) recommended we take the Wildflower Trail and then cut down south to the sandbar on the Meramec River, which is an excellent place for skipping rocks. She also recommended I take my two kids to their outdoor “classroom” for some real, unstructured play.


View Shaw Nature Reserve – Wildflower Trail in a larger map

Without a reference book, I’ve had to resort to the web for identifications, with only a little success, so I’ll post a few of my photographs here and update as I identify them.

The following two pictures are of a flower that was found covering the hillslope meadows; open areas with short grass.

Beautiful reddish-orange blooms on this small herb.
This picture better captures the growth form and leaves of this hillslope, meadow flower.
A yellow petalled variant.

Like little stars in the daylight, these small, white flowers meadow flowers almost sparkle.

Small, white, meadow flowers.

Pretty, small, yellow, meadow flowers.

Yellow, meadow flowers.

These bent-over flowers can be found on the lower, shadier edges of the hillslope meadows.

These guys like the shadier areas.
I love the texture of the charred wooden stump behind the flower. The meadow itself is possibly the result of a burn.

Iris’ were also in bloom.

Small iris.

Another herbaceous, yellow flower.

Pretty yellow flowers.

More, tiny, delicate flowers.

Found in the shadier, moister parts of of the slope.

Once you get under the canopy, you run into some broader leaved plants and their own, interesting flowers.

Bell-shaped flowers in broad-leaved herbs/shrubs.

We ended up spending a lot of time on the sandbar, learning to skip rocks and hunting for clams, but I save that for another post. And we never did get to the play area; that’ll have to wait for the next trip.

The Truth about the Hike in Montgomery Bell

Way back in Cycle 3, our class had our immersion to Nashville. We stayed in villas in Montgomery Bell State Park. Dr. mentioned in his post, “Limestone Trails at Montgomery Bell State Park”, that we went on a hike. It said that we followed a stream and then followed a ridge trail back to the villas, but it never said what happened in-between that. I’m gonna tell what really happened on that hiking day at Montgomery Bell State Park.

Our class did follow a stream; we did get soaked with nasty water; we were trying to learn something about the boring rocks that I don’t remember; and were trying to see who would fall in the stream the most.

Fellow classmates climbing over big, boring, rocks!

After a long time of following the creek (mainly walking in it), we got near a children’s play-area. Dr. told us that we needed to get back, but that we weren’t tracing our steps back. We had to climb over more huge, boring rocks to get to the ridge trail. Dr. then told us to just follow the path. Seven of us went up ahead while the rest of the class stayed way behind.

Meanwhile, one student was assigned to be the last one of the group. He got ahead of Dr., by a couple of paces, but kept looking back to make sure Dr. was following us. One time he looked back, he realized that our teacher was gone! He told two other students what had happened, and they, freaking out, ran up trying to catch up to the rest of the group. They found us and filled us in.

We all thought we were going to die out there: we were gonna be eaten alive by mountain lions; we were gonna starve; we were gonna die of thirst because we were all too stupid to go back to the stream for water! We were all going to die no matter what, unless we found Dr. We didn’t know what to do.

Some of the so-called, “adventurous”, students ran back to find Dr., while one student continued to follow the trail. The rest of us just stayed put.

The group who ran back found Dr., dilly-dallying, while the group who stayed put tried to find the one student who’d ran up ahead of the main group. Soon enough, we were happy to see Dr. again (well some of us were), because we were tired of looking for where we had to go. The first thing I heard from him was, “You guys shouldn’t have wandered off.”

It wasn’t our fault that we didn’t know where Dr. was. He was busy taking pictures so the rest of us went up ahead. Because of this, we could have died. We didn’t know where to go. He should be in front, so we know where to go and so we don’t die. It was all of his fault not ours.

He didn’t believe that.

Shiloh (and the battle of)

We hiked in Shiloh on a beautiful spring day just about a week before the anniversary of that formative battle of the American civil war. Trail #4 traces the battle from the first contact of union and confederate pickets near what is now Ed Shaws Store and Peach Orchard Restaurant, all the way to the park center where General Grant formed his last line of defense.

[googleMap name=”Ed Shaws Store” description=”Start of Trail #4″ width=”400″ height=”400″ mapzoom=”13″ mousewheel=”false”]35.116, -88.362[/googleMap]

The hike winds its way across mowed fields and through rolling, forested tracts. With the leaves not yet on the trees this was the perfect time to make this hike. Two years ago, the last time the middle school did this trip, they did it a little earlier in the year in below-freezing temperatures. Apparently it was great for character building.

We weren’t quite as lucky in the character building department, it was a nice clear day, not too hot and not too cold. On the five mile hike and our students got a lot of practice navigating by compass. However, we had to take to the paved roads about a third of the way through in order to have lunch before meeting park ranger Paul Holloway for a demonstration of an infantryman.

Paul Holloway about to charge.

Mr. Holloway was superb, bringing into sharp relief the similarities and contrasts between soldiers in the two armies. He wore a brown coat, colors which could have been on either side, and demonstrated a rifle which was impressively loud, smokey and heavy.

Before sitting beneath a tree for our class discussion of what we saw that day we took in the visitor center and the movie, made in 1956, about the Battle of Shiloh. I though the movie was quite informative if a bit understaffed, but my students picked up on the fact that the amateur thespians kept stealing glances at the camera. Not to mention getting up and charging again after they’d been shot. They also detected a subtle bias toward the South from the narrator and in the content of the movie.

The rifle demonstration was extremely useful in setting the stage for the movie, but I though the five mile hike was also important because the students got the chance to feel the distance and then consider that what took us a couple of hours, took an entire day of hard fighting.

Confederate mass grave.