Now & then: a walk through time at the Kalamazoo Nature Center.

Hopkins, Sarah ; Stobie, Peter J.F.

On a beautiful autumn afternoon, a solitary figure seeks refuge on a favorite trail that leads to an overlook above an old gravel pit. As she walks through a mature beech maple forest she thinks about the concerned citizens who, 50 years ago, rescued this lovely ravine from an expanding gravel mining company. Through their efforts, the Kalamazoo Nature Center was created.

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Today, the nature center's 1,136 acres include areas of beech maple forest, two reconstructed prairies, wetlands, river bottom lands, and farm land. This diversity of habitats is a legacy of the Wisconsinian glacial advances and retreats. At the height of the most recent advance, all of Michigan was covered by several thousand feet of ice. This ice contained huge amounts of soil and rock debris carried from more northerly parts of the state. As the ice melted, sometimes slowly and sometimes rapidly, various types of hills and depressions were left behind.

As the individual continues her walk, she crosses a spring-fed stream at the bottom of a depression and then puffs her way up a gravelly hill. She is well aware of the variety of small rocks under her feet and of the larger erratic boulders poking up from the blanket of leaves. The boulders are primarily igneous granite and metamorphic gneiss, rocks formed more than one billion years ago and subsequently shaped and transported by ice and flowing water from sources as far away as Canada.

At the top of the gravel pit she sits in an open area and studies the rocks in front of her. Soon she finds some fossil relics from 350 million years ago when Michigan lay under a warm shallow sea. Small corals patterned like honey bee combs, tiny rings from an unfathomable number of crinoids, pieces of fossilized shells, and even the plain grey limestone tell the story of an ancient ocean filled with invertebrate life. These fragments were also plucked from bedrock and carried by the ice.

In pre-settlement time this gravel hill was covered by a beech maple forest and stretched nearly one-fourth of a mile to the Kalamazoo River. In the late 1800s and early 1900s the demand for gravel grew. Many thousands of tons of gravel were removed from various sites at what was to become the nature center. One of the areas targeted for mining was very close to a lovely location that was popular with picnickers and college biology students. The alarm was raised and in 1960 the Kalamazoo Nature Center (KNC) came into existence.

Since then children of all ages have come to the old gravel pits for a glimpse of Michigan's geologic past. Local school groups put together a scale model of a glacier (15 feet of PVC piping and a Monopoly house become ice a mile thick towering over your home) and push ice cubes through the sand to observe how ice plucks rocks. Cub and Girl Scouts search for fossil fragments, weathered limestone, and colorful granite as they work toward geology awards. College students and other visitors enjoy bird-watching from the deck that overlooks the regenerating forest.

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The visitor walks across the aptly named Trout Run. This lovely stream rises in a wetland, another glacial legacy, and is fed by numerous springs. With great foresight and much persistence, the KNC has acquired all but a few acres of Trout Run's watershed. Various trails accompany many sections of the stream, but the portion that flows from the gravel pit bridge to the Kalamazoo River is the most heavily used. For more than a half-century, students have recorded the tiny animals hiding under the stream-smoothed rocks. Middle school students create an artificial oil spill with popcorn and then discuss the impact on wildlife and people. The startling reality of this activity became evident when nearly one million gallons of oil poured into the Kalamazoo River upstream from KNC in July 2010.

A few hundred yards downstream she comes to a hanging spring where the water flows downhill into Trout Run. In the spring, scores of yellow marsh marigolds grow between the rocks but in late fall only the mosses show green. In a way, this spot summarizes the history of the area. Potawatomi people, pioneers, and early nature center campers drank the very cold water. Area farmers mined marl from a nearby seep. Picnickers came to enjoy the beech maple forest with its beautiful spring wildflowers and many nesting songbirds. Across Trout Run the very edge of the gravel mine looms under the fallen leaves.

The visitor walks to the deck overlooking the confluence of Trout Run and the Kalamazoo River. She tries to imagine what this river looked like 12,000 years ago, when it was perhaps a mile wide and filled with icy glacial melt water and tumbling rocks. What Pleistocene mammals visited here? What people paddled past here? She watches the clear water bubbling past and thinks about the nature center's varied post-glacial topography and how it provides so many rich experiences for the nearly 5 million visitors that come each year.

A bald eagle flies overhead, a tribute to the returning health of the river. And thanks to the foresight of the nature center founders, this lovely spot will be preserved for both wildlife and for future generations of people. What a legacy!

Kal-Kalamazoo Nature Center is here for you ...

Inspiring people to care for the land that we all share.

Gentle rolling hills, open prairies, and sparkling water views.

Kalamazoo Nature Center is here for you.

-- Chorus from the Kalamazoo Nature Center Song [C]2010 by Foster Brown

Sarah Hopkins is the senior interpretive naturalist at the Kalamazoo Nature Center. Reach her at shopkins@ naturecenter.org. Peter J.F. Stobie, CHI, is the education director at the Kalamazoo Nature Center. Reach him at [email protected].

The glaciers sculpted what we see in Cooper's Glen today. The rolling hills of steep moraines and glacial outwash plains Forests, prairies, and wetlands emerged from the land so fair. Walk with me, I'll show you why we've learned to care.

-- Verse from the Kalamazoo Nature Center Song [C]2010 Foster Brown