Wilderness

Our Wilderness of Little Things

Oakland County, MI Government Leave a comment
A photo taken from the edge of a swamp on a cloudless day. Tall trees surround the swamp. Foliage is just starting to turn from green to fall colors.

WILDER SIDE OF OAKLAND COUNTY

Three weeks have raced by since the position of Planet Earth in relation to the sun signaled the autumn equinox; except during much of this week, we have been bathed in sultry summer-style heat with the mercury soaring into the 80s. Some of nature’s creatures became briefly “confused” and were stirred into off-season activity, with spring peepers sounding off from the edge of wetlands and well camouflaged gray treefrogs calling from moist foliage. A walk in the woods to the edge of my marsh reminded me of the timeless words of John Muir, “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness” and got me thinking. Continue reading →

Navigating Nature Centers in Oakland County

Oakland County, MI Government 2 Comments

If you’d like to learn about the wilds surrounding your everyday life, you’ll love our map of nature centers in Oakland County. This interactive map, created by Oakland County’s award-winning GIS team, will lead you on a journey across the county, from center to center, helping you plan a trip to any one of these great locations to learn about the natural world. Sunshine or rain, summer or winter, these nature centers are there for you to help grow your pool of knowledge!

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Heritage Park in Farmington Hills. Photo credit: Jonathan Schechter

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“In Wildness is The Preservation of The World,” and it Starts with You

Oakland County, MI Government 2 Comments

WILDER SIDE OF OAKLAND COUNTY

“A bear’s wild nature is evolved, over hundreds of thousands of years, to carry the impulse to roam at will over a territory of hundreds of square miles. When you put a bear in a cage, it paces relentlessly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until its paws bleed. The bleeding paws tell the zookeeper, if she is listening, a story; a story of wide open space, of rushing rivers teeming with fish, of wriggling grubs in the moist soil under the rocks, of the fragrance of wild blueberries carried for miles on the wind.”

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