We have a lot of forest land but very little natural prairie. There is a state park a few miles from here that has a few hundred acres of natural prairie with bison roaming on them. Also a lot of wild flowers.
I had class on Tuesday evening, and we were talking about the history of early conservation in Indiana. I was a bit surprised to learn that in the early 1900's our state legislature passed a law to drain all of the lakes in northern Indiana and turn them into farmland. Fortunately, for the efforts of several early conservationists, such as Gene Stratton Porter, Richard Lieber, and Jane Brooke Hines they were able to prevent that from happening. I can't imagine the devastation that would have caused to the important bird and wildlife habitats in the northern part of the state had they followed through on it.
The geology of our area is pretty interesting as well, once you know the whole historical record and how our waterways formed and created what we have here today. If you're interested in that sort of thing, here's an interesting read on wikipedia...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maumee_Torrent . This was the "event" that created most of our current geology here in Northeast Indiana.
I live on top of the remnants of the moraine that they reference in the article here in Fort Wayne. In fact, I can just about throw a rock and hit the old Erie Canal channels that they created from the low area next to the moraine.
Many of the images I post come from Eagle Marsh nature preserve in the southwestern edge of our city. Eagle Marsh was originally the southwestern edge of The Great Black Swamp area that formed after the Maumee Torrent occurred and created the Little River or Wabash River Valley. There is a marker in the marsh that designates the continental divide for watershed for North America. It's located right here in Fort Wayne. Anything west of the marker flows to the west and drains into the Mississippi River and anything east of the marker flows east to the Atlantic Ocean.
The Great Black Swamp is another interesting thing to research if you like that sort of thing. After the torrent, the swamp formed and existed from Fort Wayne to modern day lake Erie near Toledo. As the area was settled much of the swamp was drained and converted to agricultural use. However, there are still areas that were not drained or that have restored back to wetlands. Eagle Marsh was a restoration of the wetlands after being used for several decades as agricultural land. Today, nearly 1000 acres of wetland have been reclaimed to form the Eagle Marsh nature preserve.
At any rate, classes have been very fun and educational. We're about 8 weeks into our classes with about 10 more weeks to go. We have a break next week and then resume the following week. Most of the classes from that point are "double" meaning we have a 3.5 hour indoor class on Tuesday and then follow-up on Saturday with a 3-hour field class on the topic we cover.
Besides wanting to learn more about the area's plants, and wildlife I've been photographing, I'm doing the course to hopefully become a trail guide with the DNR and also to help teach people about our local surroundings and wildlife. It's also something I can use to start doing photography full time. I've already been asked to teach a workshop by the Fort Wayne Parks and Rec dept on Bird Photography this summer (June 7th) at a nature preserve that the parks department manages called Lindenwood Nature Preserve. They are kind of using that as a test workshop and if it goes well, I should get the opportunity to teach a 6-8 week course on beginning photography for the parks department on a regular basis. I would even be paid for my time to teach it.
