Master Gardener Coordinator Jill Baer, at right, invited youngsters to take turns using hand-held garden cultivators to dig into dead logs and see what they would find.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Spring is an excellent — perhaps the best —time of year to sing the praises of public parks, and a story in Wednesday’s features section demonstrated the value almost perfectly.
The sun-soaked environs of Wilkes-Barre’s Nesbitt Park hosted an excited crowd of kids under a brilliant blue sky. The Riverfront Parks Committee sponsored “Nature Discovery Day Along the Susquehanna River” for students in grades four through 8, and some 500 youngsters took advantage of the beautiful weather under blossoming trees as the Susquehanna sauntered past.
Sure, they enjoyed it partly because being there meant not being in a classroom, but that’s one of the perks of parks: They offer both a break from your daily grind and an exposure to real-world knowledge wrapped in fun and relaxation.
The kids got to sniff the brackish water mosquitoes favor for breeding, thanks to the rich supply of bacteria growing in the standing liquid. This did the double duty of showing them why they should avoid stagnant pools of water near their home — thus reducing the growth of any skeeter population — and helping them understand why the bugs tend to bite more often when you sweat.
“I’d say it smells like an old gym bag,” Lauren Holder of the Luzerne Conservation District suggested, noting that the stench comes from the lactic acid humans build up and exude when exercising to a sweat.
“You mean we smell like that?” youngsters murmured. “Yuck!”
They also learned the importance of distinguishing between native plants and non-native intruders. Forester Julian Maza of the state Bureau of Forestry uprooted a plant and asked if doing so was wrong. “You killed it!” the kids chimed. Well, yes, Maza admitted, but in this case it was an appropriate excision. The plant in his hands was garlic mustard, an invasive species that can overrun local vegetation, reshaping the environment in harmful ways.
Elsewhere, Penn State Master Gardener Jill Baer encouraged kids to dig into decaying tree branches as a lesson in how nature renews itself when left alone. “We’re talking about decomposition,” she explained as they found beetles, moss and fungi, some of nature’s common recycling agents.
Then there was the lesson from retired Nescopeck State Park Ranger Diane Madl, who held up a soda can and asked, “How long do you think it would take for this aluminum can” to decompose in a landfill. Guesses ranged from a few months to half a decade. “Two hundred to 500 years,” Madl said, pointing out how much more rational it is to recycle the metal.
This is what parks do. They educate, inform, relax and recharge. They improve your state of mind, reduce stress and lower blood pressure. Their greenery cleans the air, and their soil cleans urban water runoff as it makes its way to creeks and streams. Big or small, they increase property values. The list of boons from municipal parks is long and well-documented. And our region is blessed with a true plethora of them.
In this case, many students got to spend the day outdoors as a reward for enduring another round of annual state standardized tests (a costly scholastic ritual that has outlived its usefulness and should end, though that’s a different editorial). But you don’t need a reason to stroll through these pockets of nature.
The parks are the reason.
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