Hot. Yes, absolutely, extremely HOT. Which made today’s planned trip even more important. Thanks to the generosity of community members Glenn Mellin and Lenny Truitt, the NRWC Upward Bound students, with last year’s volunteers as well, Christian and Brianna, Upward Bound Spanish instructor Ms. Martinez and her niece, and my cousin and newly adopted member of our family Toto (recent graduate from Galludet!) we visited the aboretum, which provided treasure after treasure. From 8:00 -11:00 AMish, we discovered treasures of trees, plants, and plans of Indigenous peoples’ planting in the Delaware peninsula. We dived into the availability of their published book, Ritual Landscapes.

I do not want to take away the thunder of the presentations the students are in the midst of creating currently, but after this excursion it was obvious, thanks to guidance, how the plants and trees indigenous peoples purposely planted in areas provide a literal grocery store of food everywhere you look. The irony is this is vastly often overlooked when we look at certain plants and trees, not aware of the potential they can provide for nourishment. We all filled notebook after notebook of details, genus, and scientific connection to so many aspects of trees, plants, and growth simply not seen anywhere else in the state.

It was deeply moving and inspirational. The countless images of environmental treasures in the below gallery show you how rich with information this experience was. (I refrained from naming and classifying these as our students are putting the oomph! into their experience and this will be upcoming!)

While there are links to lists of native indigenous trees, we learned from Glenn and Lenny how some trees actually serve less insects and life than others, and when this knowledge is retained, it is a more productive way to move forward and encourage trees serving more populations of insects and life to survive over those that are less serving to so many types of wildlife.

After a information pack-filled day, we returned to the NRWC property, and sat down to plan a variety of countless projects to complete in the lessening weeks we had ahead. We ventured out after a couple hours of planning and rehydrating from the heat, and chose a section of ground that needed to be reestablished as a flower bed under our bat boxes, to be prepared in the future for seeds to bring back wild flowers in that section.

It was amazing to feel how incredibly hot it was even in the shade, and yet this reminder, of how crucial the valuable information we have been handed down from indigenous populations is important to us today. Without future generations that can see and find ways to bring us back to what matters most, the future surely is a dismal and very hot one.