Festival of the Wild Child
High Lonesome Nature Reserve
July 29th and 30th
Open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. July 29 & 30, the “Wild Child” festival is offered by the Mississippi Madawaska Land Trust (MMLT) to give children and their families an opportunity to use all their senses to explore and experience nature.
MMLT is seeking volunteers passionate about nature to interact with the visitors at one of the “stations”: exploring life in the pond, finding and identifying rocks and fossils, wandering through the enchanting Stone Wall Arboretum, investigating the secrets of the soil under your feet, creating at the creativity station, or learning bush craft. The volunteers need not be experts, only eager to help the lead of the station open windows into the many wonders of Nature, with interesting relevant information and tidbits provided as background for each station.
The Soundscaping station provides a special opportunity for anyone interested in the technology for audio interpretation of the natural world. In addition to assisting and explaining the technology, Chad Clifford would train volunteers to operate the soundscaping equipment.
There are 4 volunteer time slots for each station:
10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Saturday, July 29
1:00 – 4:00 p.m. Saturday, July 29
10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Sunday, July 30
1:00 – 4:00 p.m. Sunday, July 30
If you wish to sign up for both time periods one day, please bring a lunch. We are seeking more than one volunteer at each site to support the lead.
To volunteer, please contact Mary Vandenhoff at vandenhoff@bell.net or 1-613-278-2939. For further details, or to discuss station activities, the contact information for the lead person at each station is provided below.
Activity Stations at the MMLT “Festival of the Wild Child” July 29th and 30th
Welcome Centre: Registration, explanation of festival program (morning time slot for this station starts at 9:30 AM) (robertagclarke@gmail.com)
Beaver Pond, adjacent meadow: Creativity Station, activities such as leaf and bark rubbings, etc. Help Jacquie Christiani (jacquie.christiani@bell.net) with these or suggest other fun nature activities for little hands.
Tranquility Pond: pond life; learn about beaver (they have just moved in to this pond). Help Chris Baburek (chrisbaburek@gmail.com) catch and examine frogs, salamanders, leeches; some info on pond life and on the beaver (look at stumps where trees were recently chewed down by beavers). At least two volunteers needed for each time slot.
Rockery at Spooky Marsh: Assist Moses Goldenberg (mosessgoldenberg@gmail.com) and Deb Shea, looking for and identifying rocks; explanation of geology of area (granite/marble). Scope for also discussing trees.
Stone Wall Arboretum: Assist Anne Cameron (annercam@gmail.com ) with the identification of trees & shrubs; interesting tidbits about each. Some explanation of the stone wall and why the settlers made it.
Joel’s Pond: Soundscaping and tree identification; opportunity to be trained to work with soundscaping expert Chad Clifford (Chad@WildernessRhythms.com )
Read about the event and directions to High Lonesome in the Pakenham Hills on the MMLT website at https://mmlt.ca/event/festival-of-the-wild-child-june-29-30/
