Scurry into Springtime and Connect with the Outdoors
By Maria Icenogle, Highlands Center for Natural History Education Director
As the calendar makes steady progress toward springtime, we naturally seek opportunities to be in nature and to embrace the warm sunlight of the lengthening days. Are you looking forward to finding ways to connect with nature, to feeling your hands in the dirt, and to getting some spring planting underway? Are you starting to notice different birds at your backyard feeders and getting curious about neighboring species of plants and animals? As life wakes up around us, these final days of winter have a way of making us feel a little “squirrely” and craving the fresh air of the outdoors.
At the Highlands Center for Natural History, a nature center on Prescott National Forest near Lynx Lake, our joy and calling is to facilitate opportunities for people to meaningfully engage with nature. As environmental educators, we often use the term “sense of place” to describe the ways in which people connect with their home, in the outdoors. Perhaps you are familiar with the term “Central Highlands,” the swath of land that extends like a sash across Arizona, northwest to the edge of the Mojave Desert and southeast into New Mexico. This patch of terrain comprises Prescott and describes our home.
The Central Highlands of Arizona contains all sorts of creatures beyond humans. One critter who shares our home is a unique-looking mammal called the Abert’s squirrel. With a dark gray back with a red-brown patch, a white belly, and a bushy tail, this forest friend is a delight to behold. The real fun of Abert’s squirrels, though, is their tufted ears that, in the wintertime, look like they could pick up radio signals from the top of Glassford Hill on even the foggiest, cloudiest day!
The Abert’s squirrel depends on Ponderosa pine forests like the ones found on the grounds of the Highlands Center. You might encounter this amusing critter on the forest trails, hear them chatter with Acorn Woodpeckers, or find their handiwork of half-eaten pinecones strewn about the paths. This squirrel has a symbiotic, mutualistic relationship with Ponderosa pine trees, using its limbs to nest in, its cones, bark, and buds as food, and the networks of fungi that surround these grand trees as additional sustenance.
Much like Abert’s squirrels shed their trademark ear tufts as the seasons change, we invite you to join us as we shed the winter doldrums. Whether hiking our trails, attending an educational program, hanging out and romping with your little ones in our Forest Play area, or strolling through our ADA-accessible Discovery Gardens with your visiting family members, there is something for everyone to enjoy.
We’ll meet you, and the squirrels, at the Highlands Center!
Visit highlandscenter.org for more information.