It Comes Down To Community

The story of the Eagle Nature Trail, by Laurie Lawlor, will be available in bookstores beginning April 25, 2023.

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Last summer I paid my first visit to the Eagle Nature Trail in Eagle, Wisconsin. Enamored of its beauty, and its story, I have already returned several times since.

​The trail connects the Alice Baker Memorial Library and Eagle Elementary School. In September I attended a nature journaling workshop given by local author Laurie Lawlor at the library.

Part of the workshop was spent on the nature trail, taking in all the sensory elements of the environment, and putting pencil to paper to sketch or describe the experience. 

​Laurie Lawlor has spent a great deal of time on the Eagle Nature Trail since its beginnings, and so she was a perfect fit to host the workshop.  I thoroughly enjoyed meeting her, and was excited to learn that she was writing a book on how the trail came to be. 

Purple Coneflower and a view of the Eagle Nature Trail.

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​RESTORING Prairie, Woods, and Pond is the tale of How A small Trail Can Make A Big Difference. In this book, written for children, and budding naturalists of all ages, Laurie Lawlor explores the experience of bringing back nature one helping hand at a time. 

Throughout the book, she examines how community is key. How bringing together people from different backgrounds and working toward a common goal fosters a pride in community that's hard to find elsewhere. The transformation of a city-owned dumping ground into the Eagle Nature Trail is a perfect example.

Lawlor delves into the early history of the land the trail now encompasses, reaching as far back as the glacial age, and traces the timeline up through the first living plant organisms, to the native prairie ecosystem. Then onward as animals, birds, dragonflies, and other animal and insects inhabited the land, and, eventually,  the first humans.

The story continues on to tell of the Indigenous peoples who first lived on the land, and the eventual arrival of the first Euro-American settlers who farmed the land. It illustrates the changes to the landscape, the extreme weather events through the years, environmental struggles, and the beginnings of surveying the land to determine the best natural use for it.

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Spring peepers call from the ephemeral pond at
​Eagle Nature Trail.

Surveys of the property uncovered native purple coneflower and hoary vervains among invasive thickets, and deep purple clusters of elderberries. Signs of long-ago lost prairie remained! More exploration uncovered an ephemeral pond, and frogs that make the pond home in spring. 

​If you were to visit the pond in early spring now, you would be serenaded by the very loud and energetic calls of spring peepers. You might not be able to see them easily, but their song is unmistakable. 

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Each season on the trail is represented, as well as the educational aspects of it as an outdoor classroom to the students at Eagle Elementary. The progress of the trail as it blooms with the return of native flowers, trees, and wildlife is a great illustration of how joining together as a community can restore some natural balance to the world, and how it can bring both young and old together as well.

​It can, as the title explains, Make A Big Difference.

Native milkweed blooms along the Eagle Nature Trail, feeding pollinators of all kinds.

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There will be a Book Launch Celebration on Saturday, May 20, in Eagle, Wisconsin at the Eagle Municipal Building,  from 2pm - 3pm.   

​Click here for further details.

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