WILDER SIDE OF OAKLAND COUNTY

The Ice Age was coming to an end. Shuffling its 6-ton frame, a shaggy mastodon laboriously crossed a steep esker and trudged towards melt water from a giant block of ice left behind by the Pleistocene Era’s last local retreating glacier. The mastodons that once roamed Oakland County are now extinct, but the glacial evidence of nature’s land sculpting power is unmistakable in many sections of our county. Some of those sites, that once provided habitat for Mastodons, now harbor carnivorous flora and rare secretive creatures. One of those locations is within the Shiawassee Basin Preserve, a 600-acre site in northwestern Oakland County managed by Springfield Township Parks and Recreation. Continue reading →