The BFEC Turns 20 was originally published in the BFEC Newsletter, Vol. 19/No. 3, Summer 2015.
In the long run, twenty years is modest period of time, a measly span within Kenyon’s almost 200-year history. Yet on a personal scale, twenty years ago can feel surprisingly distant. It’s long enough for an infant to hopefully become an adult, or a newly minted adult to mysteriously find herself entering middle age.
I was a sophomore attending Kenyon when the BFEC opened and confess that the details from that era are a bit fuzzy in my now middle=aged brain. The BFEC’s 20th anniversary offers us a good reason to look into the past and celebrate how the BFEC has grown up, to revisit why it was created and why its mission is more important now than ever.
Like most great things, it started with a vision. This one belonged to Kenyon President Phillip Jordan envisioned a land lab for academic work and a place for students and community to experience the fullness of life in nature. What better way to study and enjoy ecology than through first-hand experience, with the boundless interactions of organisms fluttering around you? With Kenyon’s surround of forest and farm, it seemed like a perfect fit.
The vision blossomed when President Jordan shared it with Early Raymond “Ray” Heithaus ’68 and his wife Patricia as they joined the Biology Department faculty in 1980. A potential site popped up in the late 1980’s, when the college purchased the Maxwell Farm, on which the BFEC house, gardens, prairie, and pine woods now stand, in an effort to preserve the area’s rural character.
Ray dove into planning a land lab and nature center from scratch, working with Kathy VanAlstyne, a then-member of the Kenyon biology faculty, and others to put the vision down on paper. It being way back in the Dark Era Before GIS, mapping was literally on paper: 3x5' sheets of transparent acetate that could be drawn on and layered. What habitats would be the most useful for conservation of species, and for learning? Where were the best spots to plant forests or build ponds?
With support from President Jordan, they hired a consultant to help them map their new baby. They also conceptualized how it would be used and by whom, crafting a three-part mission of conservation, supporting student research and community outreach that continues to propel the BFEC today.
Their plan was approved by the College trustees, and with another round of support from President Jordan, a part-time faculty director, Elizabeth Webb, was hired. The center opened its door in October 1995, though for the time, under a different name: the Kenyon Center for Environmental Study.
Like other organizations that conserve natural areas, it’s something that we do for nature’s own sake, because we believe that natural diversity should survive. It probably goes without saying that we are motivated by fascination and awe, and a love for its shapes and colors and charismatic animals.
When the BFEC committed to community outreach, it sought to share the preserve as resource, to make it widely available for learning and enjoyment. School groups started visiting within a year under the able hands of the BFEC’s second director and former classroom teacher, Inese Sharp. Taking children outside felt like the right thing to do and was a powerful way to teach adaptations and life cycles, habitats and food webs.
But for college students and children alike, our educational mission is intertwined with philosophy and the practicality of needing to conserve natural areas for our own survival.
Allowing people to experience what is special about a particular place, to know its fullness of life and to feel a part of it, is deeply grounding. Especially when working with youth, we design activities to feed underlying curiosity with direct sensory experiences, such as hiding in the dark, damp grass during a food web game at camp, holding a wriggling frog, or knowing the hush and smell of the pine woods. (it smells exactly the same to me now as it did twenty years ago when the trees were just 5 feet tall).
Through these experiences, we not only provide context for learning that allows concepts to stick, we help young people develop a level of consciousness about the environment, followed by ownership and commitment, which may then extend further afield to habitats near and far.
David Sobel writes in his book Beyond Ecophobia that “the key is allowing for a close relationship to develop between children and the nature near home before laying the weight of the world’s plight on their shoulders. Once children feel connected to nature and ‘the environment,’ physically and emotionally, they’ll be compelled to seek the hard facts, take vested interest in healing the wounds of past generations while devising feasible sustainable practices and policies for the future.”
Kenyon College is perfectly suited to facilitate the latter half of this equation. With a liberal arts approach of studying broad topics and their interconnectedness, students prepare to address entangled webs of environmental problems, which are layered with psychology, technology, politics, science, economics and history.
Many students we’ve known over the years have told us that the BFEC, as a living laboratory and nature preserve at Kenyon’s doorstep “is the reason I came to Kenyon.” They also are a case study in another need for green space: our health. They tell us that the preserve offers a space to be away from the concentrated stress of academic and social life. But isn’t the need to unplug and relax true for all of us?
With the chronic diseases of our time a result of sedentary, over-stressed lifestyles, the research about nature as a powerful cure is piling up (see slate.com July 25, 2014 article about doctors prescribing a walk in the park as an example). With access to it, we not only fight obesity and heart disease by simply moving, we fight depression and anxiety; we elevate cognition and social behavior. At times, it’s like dissolving that little black cloud hanging overhead.
For hyper-energetic children, the soothing effect can seem almost magical. Ask Lori Zolman, Mount Vernon kindergarten teacher and instructor for nature camp at the BFEC, help in partnership with SPI Spot. When she took twenty-seven kids outdoors in June for self-directed exploration, “they engaged so fully and seamlessly that it didn’t feel like work.”
As if fighting chronic diseases wasn’t important enough, we haven’t even touched the need for green space for the very elemental needs of clean air and clean water. In short, we need young people to care for our world for the benefit of all, but in order to do so, they must know and love it first.
After the center opened in 1995, new features were added in rapid fire. Blazing trails and creating a butterfly garden began quickly, with Pat Heithaus and many volunteers providing much of the sweat equity. Where a cornfield once stood behind the house, a prairie was seeded in 1997 with help from volunteers Guy Denny, Stu Schott, and Mike Dailey. An advisory board was created in 1997, along with regular public programming. With Ray and area resident Doug McLarnan doing much of the footwork, the Kokosing River was designated as “State Scenic.”
In 1998 and 1999, thousands of trees were planted to expand the wooded corridor along the Kokosing River, a few by my own hands. Ponds were created for student research, and Girl Scouts constructed fifteen nesting boxes to begin the bluebird trail, which now numbers thirty-eight boxes. Kenyon students were involved along the way in the work, plus through the rigor of classes and the fun of hikes and art contests.
According to Ray, the founders were surprised by how quickly community outreach programs grew as school field trips poured in. It soon became clear that the original house, which was being used as an office, student manager residence, and public program space, was inadequate.
The Minigowin Foundation stepped in with an endowing gift in honor of the Brown Family and Kenyon Center for Environmental Study became the Brown Family Environmental Center. The Advisory Panel raised another $500,000, with the help of a sizable contribution from the Ariel Foundation and CEO Karen Buchwald Wright, to build the resource center, which opened in 2001. The Minigowin Foundation gift also allowed the BFEC to build staffing, who were (and are) the engines behind conservation and engaging people with nature.
The BFEC is now reaching more people and managing more trails and habitat than ever. We serve 5,500 people per year through public programs, field trips, trial races, photo contests, and other events. This does not include the hundreds of people who visit the BFEC’s gardens and seven miles of trail at their leisure to hike, relax or picnic.
Since 1995, we’ve tallied some impressive numbers: 58 acres of restored wetland, forest, and prairie, 10,000 trees planted, nearly 1,000 bluebirds fledged, and 16,000 school field trip visits. The work has been possible through our donors and members, and of course, through the people with the vision and work ethic to get it started.
In looking back over 20 years, I asked Ray if he felt as if he and his many co-conspirators had achieved what they set out to accomplish. Without hesitation he replied “yes,” and that there were a few things that went above and beyond his expectations. “I hadn’t dreamed of this building,” he said, and the very quick response from the community to the need for more space.
He noted that there were a few small things in the initial plans that did not transpire—a large pond for instance, because the soils here would simply not support one. “But that’s fine, you adapt,” he commented. It is a naturally ecological view of the world from a person who has helped share — through the indoor and outdoor classroom — the joys and necessity of nature with thousands of people, myself included.