Welcome to Nature Up North!

As always this time of year puts me in mind of mud puddles and rubber boots and cool rainy evenings spent lying in the grass listening to the shrill chorus of spring peepers. It’s been a long time since I’ve jumped in mud puddles and much of the time I find my inner child warring with the adult I’ve become. When did I begin to lose touch with the natural world? When was the last time you, or I, laid on the flat of our backs and listed to a spring night come alive around us?

The Nature Up North project is an effort to help North Country residents get outside and reconnect with the natural world. As a new initiative we are working to understand the everyday demands that our technologically driven society places on you: the need to stay connected, to share your experiences, and to keep updated about ongoing events and activities. Nature Up North is designed to bridge the gap between technology and the natural world, to provide a virtual resource to assist you in exploring all the amazing things the North Country has to offer.As the web site grows, it will provide community members with an outdoor events calendar, downloadable maps to facilitate outdoor adventures, and reference information to learn more about what you see when you go!  Aside from the many health benefits of time outside, building our connections to the natural world here in the North Country will also help us to better care for our natural environments. 

We hope you’ll stay tuned as the project unfolds.  We look forward to providing outdoor experiences through guided hikes, workshops, and other community events.  In the meantime, we hope you’ll get outside and share your experiences here in the North Country by posting reports of your encounters in nature! Show off your hiking skills, your favorite climbing spot, the best place for a summer picnic, or the remarkable photos you take. Take a moment to reconnect with nature and share with everyone how beautiful and worthy of care and protection this place we call home really is.