By Tom Noreen
At the end of January, Cedar Springs’ Ranger Steve Mueller presented his Wilderness – Unique Treasure program for the Audubon Club at Aquinas College. Nancy and I watched via a Zoom link. Steve’s presentation was based on the ideals found in Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, with its call for a land ethic to communicate the true connection between people and the natural world.
Ranger Steve emphasized the importance and values of protecting wilderness remnants for recreation, science and wildlife using the unique and fragile ecosystems of the American Red Rock Wilderness of Southern Utah as an illustration. Steve is intimately familiar with this region as he has spent many summers working and recreating there.
As a side note, Steve’s thoughts were echoed in Michigan author Mark Kenyon’s book, That Wild Country, that I recently read. Mark writes about his experiences in the wilderness areas of the US that he has made a point to visit. Interwoven with these “hikes into the woods” is a history of the preservation of wilderness areas and the people that made it possible including Aldo Leopold.
At the end of his presentation, a surprise tribute was given to Steve. Those attending described the impact that Steve had on their lives. Many knew Steve from his years at HCNC and some from his involvement in other organizations. The common picture painted by all told of Steve’s passion for nature, his patience, his desire to pass on his knowledge to others, and his vision.
I first met Steve and his wife Karen at our church shortly after we moved back to Cedar Springs in 2001. I didn’t know what he did until I went with our son Peter on a 5th grade field trip to HCNC later that fall. I fell in love with the area, as well as the program and came away wanting to be one of the environmental educators. On that visit, I also found that another member of our congregation worked there, Sue Vicari. I queried Sue with all kinds of questions about working there, the program, etc. The last of which was do you think Steve would consider hiring me? In short, he did and I had the chance to work for him for a few years until the Kent Intermediate School District closed HCNC because they didn’t feel environmental education was a priority. I continued to work there after the Kent County Conservation took over the mission and then volunteered when it transitioned into the non-profit it is today. It wasn’t the same without Steve’s passion and vision.
As instructors, Steve insured we got the best training to include how to prepare study skins by skinning and preserving the hides of “road kill” so that the students could look and feel the animals and birds they learned about. Other training was more academic. I attended a seminar on the Leopold Education Project that has since evolved into “an innovative, interdisciplinary conservation and environmental education curriculum based on the essays in A Sand County Almanac.” I would highly recommend this book. While written in the 1930/1940s, it is as current today as it was then. It is available both in print or audio format from the Kent District Library.
It’s been ten years since I led a group at HCNC and all of these experiences flooded back as the speakers shared their appreciation of Steve and the difference he made in their lives.
At the end of the tributes, Steve offered an open invitation to anyone that wanted to visit his own 61-acre preserve, Ody Brook Nature Sanctuary, nestled along Little Cedar Creek a mile south of Cedar Springs. He has made that invitation many times, but I never took him up on it. This time I did; in the afternoon of February 11, Steve and I began the loop trail that traverses many of the different habitats encompassed by the sanctuary. Déjà vu. I thought I was back at HCNC as a new instructor following Steve around and listening to him as he passionately described nature around us.
As we walked the loop trail, he pointed out such things as the rare American chestnut trees, which Henry Wadsworth Longfellow immortalized in his 1842 poem, The Village Blacksmith. It starts, “Under the spreading chestnut tree/The village smithy stands.” At the time it was written, American chestnut forests blanketed the east. Its importance, as a building material and food source, was key to pioneers as they moved out from the coast. Since then chestnut blight, which is caused by a fungus and spread from imported Japanese chestnuts, has devastated the species.
He showed me the bridges that our mutual friend, Phil Wesche, had built over the creek, in a couple of spots. One leads to a small island that provides a secluded place to commune with the nature around.
At the end of the walk, I was in awe of Steve’s zeal for life and passion for nature. I’m not sure how anyone around him would not be motivated to learn more and want to be a part of the wonders of nature.
I just finished listening to Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and The Battle of the Labyrinth, which is a young adult fantasy based on Greek mythology. In it, the young satyr Grover Underwood has spent years searching for the god Pan. Pan has been missing for hundreds of years and Grover’s life mission is to find him. They find him in a crystal cave surrounded by extinct animals and a garden of beautiful plants reclining on his death bed. Pan is dying because there are so few wild places left that he cannot survive. He charges Grover and his friends that it is now their responsibility to take action, spread the word and preserve what little is left of the wild. Ranger Steve has been doing this for years.
