More travels, home schooling, prairie themes and the beginnings of Tallgrass Ontario

There were some overlapping events in the late '80s and early '90s. Certainly Marie and I enjoyed being the parents of a growing youngster, and Tim was very active. Marie was a big fan of home-schooling, and I supported her. We were encouraged by some friends who were strong advocates of it, and were successful doing it with their kids. Tim seemed to enjoy it, although he was not initially interested in reading. But once he got interested in planes, especially military planes, he adapted to reading quite well, and actually excelled at it. Learning came naturally to him. The military books from the library were always stacked high as Tim locked onto the subject. Even when Marie or I were reading a bedtime story to him, if it was one we had read before, we could not take short-cuts, as Tim would notice and correct us! Home-schooling was done for only about 4 of the elementary school years. There were various benefits, and was definitely the best course of action for all while it lasted.

In the fall of 1992, the three of us took a trip west. Marie had met someone at a writer's conference, who was based in southern Manitoba, but whose father, Jim, was a retired fellow with the US Air Force, and was stationed at Colorado Springs where he was involved with the US Air Force Academy. Since we had Colorado Springs on our travel route anyway, we were encouraged to stop in to see him and see the Academy, which we did. He gave us a wonderful tour of the place, watching the members of the Academy marching around, and seeing some of the various historical planes, and even had our accommodation paid for.  

Tim posing by a plane

While we were at Colorado Springs, we also visited the studio where Focus On The Family produced a kid's radio show, known as Adventures in Odyssey, which we had listened to regularly on the radio. It was an entertaining program for both kids and adults, with so many great Christian values to learn and live by. Not only did we get a tour of the facility, we also were asked to participate with a group of others who were providing background 'crowd noises' for one of those productions.

We moved on from there, stopping at Great Sand Dunes National Park, where the gigantic sand dunes continued to be a crowd pleaser.

 Next on our journey was stopping at Mesa Verde National Park, to explore the long-abandoned cliff houses of the Anasazi people. I had read a book about this place many years before, and was interested in seeing it, and convinced the others it was worthwhile. We camped just inside the park, and then the next day went and explored this fabulous place. It was awesome.

We then continued on, heading for California, stopping at the Edwards Air Force base near Barstow, where a couple of the newly produced SR 71 blackbirds stealth planes were kept. Tim was enthralled by this visit as well, but we had to keep moving. Our western-most destination was to visit a cousin of Marie's, who lived with her husband about an hour south of Yosemite National Park. We stayed there for three days, and I went to Yosemite for parts of all three days. Tim came twice, and Marie only once, as she and I had been there before and she, of course, wanted to visit with her cousin.

Overlooking the Yosemite Valley, taken by Tim

After this part of the trip, we headed north to British Columbia to visit my sister in Nelson, and while we were there, we were keeping track of the success of the Toronto Blue Jays, which both Tim and I were fans of.

In the late spring of '93 the three of us went to Arizona, where my parents were spending the winter. Marie and I had been there several times before, beginning in the early '80s, but it was always a treat to visit family as well as see the wonderful Sonoran Desert with all of the varied cacti and desert wildlife.

At Saguaro National Park, taken by Tim

These trips were great, and Tim really lapped up as much of the history and geography of our travels. One time when we were traveling, with him sitting in the front passenger seat and he and I having some discussions about the area we were traveling through, I still remember him looking over at me and saying 'I just can't get enough history' with a big happy smile on his face. This was definitely a trend for him. I also remember when he was moving to the high school grades, the teachers indicated he should be doing the technical studies program rather than the arts and sciences due to what to them seemed to be a lack of interest or ability in those studies. However he was able to take some of the A & S classes as an option, and in one case it was a history class, and the end result was that he scored right at the top of the class ahead of almost all of the A & S students! And on another occasion when some of the teachers earlier thought he had a learning disability and wasn't doing as well as they had expected, we had Tim appraised by someone who specialized in assessing students with learning disabilities. We weren't too concerned with his suspected learning 'issues', and in fact after he was tested and evaluated by this Ph.D. specialist, we were told that there was no learning disability; the problem was that Tim was probably smarter than the teachers, and may just have been bored! No question that Tim has always been a very smart dude, with a great memory.
 

 My work continued to present all sorts of opportunities and challenges. I was quite involved with anything to do with Tallgrass Prairie, especially as it pertained to management and other issues at Ojibway Prairie Prov Nature Reserve. I had also continued working with the natural heritage staff of Walpole Island First Nation regarding their excellent tallgrass prairies and savannas, along with the management of those exceptional places and the numerous species at risk that were there, which sometimes were seldom or even not found anywhere else in Ontario.

On one occasion as I was examining a section of Ojibway Prairie, I came across this plant.

I was pretty sure what it was, as I had seen it at Walpole in previous years, and took a sample to the staff at the city-run nature centre to get it confirmed. However although it had been discovered in the Windsor area in the early 1890s by the notable botanist of that era, John Macoun, it had not been seen since! This was the first time this extreme rarity, Pink Milkwort, had been documented in the Windsor area in almost a century.

With so much involvement with prairie, along with many other things that were part of my work load, I managed to get to several North American Prairie Conferences. I mentioned in a previous post about going to the one in 1984, at the twin cities of Fargo, ND and Moorhead, MN. I also went to the one in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1988, and stopped in at the historical Rochester cemetery which was surrounded by prairie.

In 1990, I took a prairie display to the NAPC at Cedar Falls, Iowa. It was at this latter conference that Paul, the prairie specialist from Windsor's Ojibway Nature Centre made a presentation to the selection committee to put in a request for Windsor to host the 1992 conference. He asked me to go along, and at one point I was asked by members of the selection committee about OMNR's support for it. I told them it would definitely be supported, and also due to my being quite involved with tallgrass prairie at Walpole Island, the WIFN would undoubtedly be involved as well. When all was said and done, the city of Windsor, along with OMNR and WIFN was given the green light to host the 1992 conference, which would be the first time it was held outside the USA. The staff of the WIFN heritage centre were quite involved, fortunately.

Ojibway Prairie PNR

 We had two years to get ready, and it was a lot of work, but it really was worth the effort. The conference was well attended, and there was a lot of interest and attendance by folks in Ontario who normally would not have gone to the USA to participate in this conference. There were some excellent demonstrations of how OMNR handled the ignition of prescribed burns in a city environment through aerial ignition using a helicopter. Aerial ignition added to the overall safety of the burn, to ensure that local kids were not out exploring in places that would soon be fired up. The attendees were quite impressed. We also had drummers from WIFN perform at one of the evening barbecues, and had field trips to various high quality prairie sites. Being the most familiar with so many of the excellent prairies of WIFN, I was in charge of field trips there. I still remember watching some of the US prairie specialists behaving like a kid in a candy store, as they were quite delighted to see the quality and diversity of prairie on Walpole.

Pottawatomie Prairie, WIFN

It was clear that this conference was an all-round success, and I prepared a short summary of it for my supervisors and the district manager. I indicated that since there was a lot of interest in prairie from the many Ontario attendees, who in many cases were doing some type of prairie management on their own, but on a small scale, it would be really beneficial if we could establish an Ontario Tallgrass Prairie group. The district manager replied, saying it was a good idea, and to go for it! Thus the beginnings of Tallgrass Ontario was under way. It didn't happen right away, however. At one point there had been support from the Species At Risk folks in main office, to establish a recovery team to focus on habitat recovery plans rather than just species specific plans. The initial proposal was to focus on Lake Erie Sandspits, but when I was consulted by my counter-part in the region, I strongly suggested that Tallgrass Prairie was a much higher priority, so he went back to the main office folks, and it was decided to have a Tallgrass Prairie and Oak Savanna recovery team. I was asked to participate on that team, and one of the main recommendations of that report was to establish a group to consolidate the efforts of various people across southern Ontario involved in various ways with tallgrass prairie. It took awhile, but as a result, Tallgrass Ontario officially came to be! Yay!

All the while so much was going on on the work front, family life continued. Tim was growing, a busy seven-year old, and one of his regular prayers was 'Please God, give us a baby'. We had kept on pursuing the adoption route, and in September of 1993, Tim's prayers (and ours) seemed to be answered. A little one-year old girl, who had been in foster care with some folks in Strathroy was going to be placed for adoption. Marie, Tim and I went to meet her and her foster family. Before the meeting was too far along, Tim came up to Marie and I who were sitting on a sofa, with a big smile on his face, and whispered to us 'I want her!' Everything went really well, and we now had a little girl in our family, who we named Kristin Alana Jessie. Yay again!

All this time, Pelee Island had become an ever increasing focus of my workload, and rightfully so. I expect there will be at least a couple of blog posts dealing with the enormous and complex issues it required!

If you would like to subscribe to Life Is A Journey, send an email to: prairietramper@gmail.com