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"Every community needs a nature center just like it needs a school, church, and library. Nature centers teach environmental values. This book is a practical and usable guide to establishing and operating a nature center from authors who did it themselves and who studied dozens of other nature centers across the country. It is full of useful information, and a must read for anyone interested in nature centers."--John Flicker, President, National Audubon Society"The authors' love of nature and their labor of love in establishing the Cibolo Nature Center come through loud and clear. . . . They offer a wealth of wisdom based on their own experiences in a clear, readable style. They also present significant information on where help is available."--Michael Riska, Executive Director, Delaware Nature SocietyPreserving wild land as a community nature center can be a powerful antidote to the stresses of modern living. This practical handbook is designed to inspire, inform, and enable readers to create a local nature center, or help an existing nature center grow and prosper. It will be an essential resource for nature center pioneers, as well as volunteers, board members, donors, government officials, or new members who want to educate themselves about the operation and potential of a nature center in their community.Brent Evans and Carolyn Chipman-Evans give step-by-step instructions for creating and maintaining a nature center. They cover topics such as starting from scratch; gathering support; organizing the organization; building community; handling costs, budgets, and funding; managing land without managing to ruin it; and planning. Photographs, line drawings, and boxes with helpful tips amplify the entire book.
This collection of writings and images by the legendary Big Bend photographer offers adventure, history, personal musings, and natural beauty. Photographer-naturalist Peter Koch first visited Big Bend National Park in February, 1945, on assignment to take promotional pictures for the National Park Service. He planned to spend a couple of weeks, and ended up staying for the rest of his life. Koch’s magnificent photographs and documentary films introduced the park to people across the United States and remain an invaluable visual record of the first four decades of Big Bend National Park. In this book, Koch’s daughter June Cooper Price draws on her father’s photographs, newspaper columns, and journal entries, as well as short pieces by other family members, to present his vision and many experiences of the Big Bend. The adventure begins with a six-day photographic trip through Santa Elena Canyon on a raft made from agave flower stalks. Koch also describes hiking on mountain trails and driving the scenic loop around Fort Davis; “wax smuggling” and other ways of making a living on the Mexican border; ranching in the Big Bend; collaborating with botanist Barton Warnock; and the history and beauty of Presidio County, the Rio Grande, and the Chihuahuan Desert.
The Rio Grande makes a large bend into Mexico and forms the "boot heel" of Texas that is the Big Bend. Big Bend National Park nestles inside this meander, and its history is as much a part of Mexico as it is of Texas. The remote border location is historically replete with rich cultural diversity, including nomadic bands of Native Americans, Spanish explorers, Mexican and Anglo farmers, ranchers, miners, military men, and entrepreneurs. In the 1930s, a handful of people saw the Big Bend's majestic ruggedness as a place where all Americans could touch the Creator in nature and appreciate the alien qualities that both test and console the human spirit. This remote frontier still draws the souls of those seeking wide-open vistas and crystal-clear night skies.
A detailed study of education on the frontier, in one small spot it Southwest Texas which covers a 60-year period. The subject is the school in particular.
Miles evokes Indian, Mexican and Anglo traditions that converge in this area in this collection of tales. They cover supernatural phenomena such as the Marfa lights and water witching, murders, feuds, and lost treasures.
Approximately thirty-seven million American children attend elementary school, but only 20 of these children do so in one of the most remote national parks in the lower 48. From fall 2002 through spring 2006 my husband and I lived and taught in Big Bend National Park, Texas. This is the story of our experience in this remarkable school. One hundred miles from a supermarket, a hospital, or a Pizza Hut, my students and I laughed, learned, and flourished. In addition to learning reading, writing, and arithmetic in this rare world which moves at a pace and is imbued with the serenity of an earlier time, our adventures included bus trips, video conferences, school plays, river voyages, re-vegetation projects, and desert hikes. It is my wish that through these pages you will experience some of the joy that enriched my life during my years at San Vicente Elementary School. This account also includes glimpses into some behind-the-scenes activities and events that occurred in this particular national park. Whether attending presentations of the scientists who conduct research in the park, hunting down a mountain lion that has attacked a tourist, or relocating a rattlesnake retrieved from the school playground, the park rangers and interpreters stayed busy. Yet they made time to share their expertise with my students whenever called upon. Some of the history of the Big Bend region, along with its geology, flora, and fauna is also included. This area of the State retains echoes of earlier times -times when this vast, rugged, remote, and hauntingly beautiful part of Texas was indeed, the last frontier. Come travel around the Bend with me and listen to this Texas teacher's love song. Pat Seawell 's Texas roots run deep. An ancestor fought and died at the Alamo, and she grew up on a South Texas cattle ranch. Her teaching career spans five decades, four states, and three continents. She has bachelor's and Ph.D. degrees from The University of Texas at Austin and a master's from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. After two retirements from public school teaching, she is currently working as an assistant professor in the education department at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas. While she has enjoyed teaching multiple subjects and grade levels, Pat's real passion is her students. For them she applauds, for them she cheers. She lives with her husband of 47 years on a ranch, observing wildlife, collecting beautiful rocks, and dreaming of returning to the park as a geologist.
Travel deeper into the Texas outback with writer-historian Mike Cox as he recounts the lesser-known stories from Alpine, Fort Davis and Marfa. Revisit the grandeur of Alpine's Holland Hotel, peer through the telescope at the McDonald Observatory and dip your toes in the water hole at Ernst Tinaja, if you dare. Travel back to a time when the Comanche Trail stretched one thousand miles from Kansas to Mexico, making the Big Bend difficult to defend and impossible to resist trying. Celebrate Cinco de Mayo, the anniversary of Benito Juarez's decisive defeat of the French at Pueblo in 1867. If nothing else, come for the lore and history that is as extensive in the Big Bend region as the mountain passes and desert stretches themselves.