Four Walks at KSR, Part 2

In early July I drove to Jokers Hill with Jenny Kerber, who teaches in the Department of English at the University of Toronto. Jenny is the author of an excellent book on prairie literature: Writing in Dust: Reading the Prairie Environmentally, from Wilfrid Laurier University Press. She took the photograph I used in my first post as well the photos below. Jenny wanted to see the Reserve for herself, and with an eye to whether she could make use of it in her teaching.

The day was very hot and sunny, the sky bright summer blue. Art walked us along a network of forest paths through the woods east of Dufferin, past an abandoned maple syrup hut and a beaver pond that’s well on its way to becoming a beaver meadow. He had a story about the pond outflow being blocked that I’ve now forgotten. I’ll have to ask him to tell it again some time and write it down. It does look like I need to make take field notes my mantra—

We ate lunch with two graduate students, Emily and Suzanne, who were just back from a conference where they had presented well-received papers. They'd also taken part in the demonstration on Parliament Hill protesting the Federal Government’s cuts to funding for science just as we move deeper into the climate crisis. (If you want to know more about the protest search “I Stand with Canada’s Scientists”.) Talking to these young women about their research and their involvement in their work was inspiring.  

After lunch Art drove us past several research plots, explaining what was going on in them. 

Art Weis with undergraduate students, and me, checking out the ant sites. 

Art also introduced us to a non-human member of the KSR community, a young praying mantis. Notice that amazing eye staring right at you ... I'll have more to say about that another time.