00:00:13 Dan French

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Naturally Speaking, a podcast about people and nature in Northern New York.

00:00:19 Dan French

I'll be your host for this episode. My name is Dan French. I'm the project manager for Nature Up North and today we're going to be speaking to local community member, nonprofit member, and artist Sarah Lynch.

00:00:31 Dan French

We're very excited to talk to Sarah today about her artwork, its relation to nature, and how she involves the people of the North Country in the combination of those two things.

00:00:40 Dan French

So what we're going to do today is talk to Sarah about her background, how she got into art, some of the summer events she held this past year on Fall Island in Potsdam, and finally, we're going to talk to Sarah about her upcoming events, hopefully next summer on Falls Island Canton. Very excited to talk to her about those things.

00:01:07 Dan French

Welcome Sara. Thanks for being here.

00:01:08 Sara Lynch

Hi, thanks for having me.

00:01:10 Dan French

Definitely. So you're local to the area.

00:01:13 Sara Lynch

I am. I was born in Potsdam and my family is not from the area. My family, my parents moved here in the 70s because my dad got a job at Clarkson. So you know, there's like up here. There's like layers to localness. Like I'm. You know, my family hasn't been here for six generations, but I was born here, as were my siblings, so.

00:01:33 Dan French

I was also born. I think that's the important part. At least I'll say it is. And I guess the best place to start is how did you get into art or what appealed to you about it?

00:01:44 Sara Lynch

I don't know. I mean, I remember seeing other people make art and being like that looks really cool and fun to do. And I just remember really enjoying art and always like, seeing things that I could make with art and like wanting them like my parents joke about how they bought me literally every single craft kit they could, because I would like see it and be like, hey, I want that for my birthday and which makes you know, it was pretty easy for them to buy me stuff for my birthdays and whatnot.

00:02:14 Sara Lynch

And I had decent middle school art teacher, which I think makes a difference. And then I had a really good high school art teacher, which is, you know, that's a huge bonus. Then I knew I wanted to go to art school, so I got a scholarship to Alfred University, which is like in New York State, but about six hours away.

00:02:38 Sara Lynch

I went to school there and have pretty much have just been making art the whole time.

00:02:45 Dan French

Thanks. Yeah.

00:02:46 Dan French

And then it's Alfred is it urban? I’m unfamiliar with the school.

00:02:50 Sara Lynch

Alfred is an hour South of Rochester and it is smaller than Potsdam. They used to have one traffic light which they had a celebration for its 50th year anniversary, and I heard that they recently removed it and I am weirdly sad about that. So it is a teeny tiny town.

00:03:10 Sara Lynch

But there it's in a valley. And so there's two schools. There's Alfred State, which is like an ag school and then like Ag Tech school. And then there's Alford University, which has, like, ceramic engineering, a really big art school and like a few other things, but basically if you're not student there, the social life revolves around the studio and you, you make a lot of art 'cause there's not really anything else to do so.

00:03:37 Dan French

Awesome. And then, we'll talk about this more in a second, but there's a big nature component to the artwork that you create. How did the how did nature become your inspiration?

00:03:50 Sara Lynch

I think, I mean, I've lived different, I've lived in urban areas. I've lived in, you know, more rural areas. And I like to paint landscapes and like, look at things and capture them. But I always starting, particularly in maybe like middle high school through undergrad, I did a lot of sort of like working with garbage and like found objects and sort of the process of hoarding the junk that we acquire through life for, like pieces of trash I find on the ground and putting them into art.

00:04:23 Sara Lynch

Talking about sort of overconsumption and things of that nature I would say. As time went on, well, for about a decade I had a product-based business. Was really, I did a lot of commissions. I made people things and there was sort of an exhaustion around the work like Christmas season in particular, I would just get so burnt out. But also I'm like making all these things and I'm like, does the world really need more things? There's a lot of things already. Like I have very mixed feelings about it.

00:05:00 Sara Lynch

I did a lot of resin jewelry like before it was super popular like. Undergrad. We were sort of obsessed with, like, dipping nature in resin and seeing what happens, which is a very weird experiment because there's like chemical process and things explode and it's yeah like so it like heats and then like it contracts around the object, so if you're putting like a Berry in there, it's going to burst.

00:05:23 Sara Lynch

There's somebody recently that's been encasing whole pumpkins in resin every year and then they show them over time and it’s like fascinating.

00:05:31 Sara Lynch

Well, but it’s terrible. So you're, like, making this, like plastic in the world and that's I was like collecting all this like nature and bugs and like arranging them into like jewelry and you know, even like I have, like, biologist friends who are like, this is cool, this is like modern fossils. I'm like, yeah, but like, we could have a nuclear fallout and they would, there would still be all this plastic stuff I made and so I have like very mixed feelings about that. And I started to sort of think about my art in a longer term like more project based thing and just like taking grants that I was writing to fund projects that were bigger picture and getting people to think about nature and our relationship to it.

00:06:18 Dan French

You weren't always an artist by trade. Is that right? I think there was.

00:06:22 Sara Lynch

I worked in childcare for six years, but you know, because I had an art background, I did like a lot of artistic stuff, like I did a lot of very involved bulletin boards with the kids and we were on SUNY Potsdam’s campus, so I would partner with the various departments and we would go to like the dance education students and we would do these really cool like.

00:06:44 Sara Lynch

These are like one step equals X amount of like miles and we would physically depict like where the earth is in relation to the sun through dance and like so we would do these really interesting sort of, you know, science slash artistic stuff with the kids.

00:07:00 Sara Lynch

It was, you know, it was daycare, but it was also, like, really awesome. And unfortunately, they axed their dance program, so that is not happening anymore.

00:07:12 Dan French

That's unfortunate, yeah.

00:07:15 Dan French

You also mentioned this grant writing a little bit as part of how you do your art, which is a nice segue into the series of events that you did on Fall Island in Potsdam this year. And for folks who don't know, Fall Island is in Potsdam, in the middle of the Racquet river, it is an island that contains the Trinity Church, which was the oldest church in Potsdam and one of the oldest sandstone buildings in Potsdam.

00:07:44 Sara Lynch

It also has real Tiffany windows. I think that's, yeah, they do tours occasionally. I’ve never been, which is embarrassing.

00:07:52 Dan French

So that's on the up-river side, but on the down-river side behind Jernabi’s and Ace Hardware, there is a park and the events you did this summer were themed around that park in particular.

00:08:04 Dan French

And I'm wondering, did you set up to do something around Fall Island or was Fall Island the, I guess the nest you fell into for art.

00:08:16 Sara Lynch

Yeah, I mean maybe a little bit of both I, oh 2021, which I'd be like last year, that's not last year.

00:08:29 Sara Lynch

2021 I went to Yestermorrow Design/Build school in Vermont and got certified in permaculture design, and part of that was I had to do a like design suggestion for somewhere and I went with Fall Island because it's such, like I grew up hanging out there and it's such an underutilized space.

00:08:52 Sara Lynch

I think I noticed it in particular during Covid, like I would go there and I've done very small murals there just like on like benches and things.

00:09:00 Sara Lynch

And I I've gotten permission to do those small murals in the past because nobody really cares about that park. Like I mean, yes, it's taken care of by the Lions Club and there's like efforts to revitalize it, but it has been very neglected and you can just tell by looking at it. It's crumbling and you know I, So I did this study of it and was like.

00:09:21 Sara Lynch

This is such a cool spot. Like it's there's two waterfalls right in town. You could like walk there from somewhere. And yet, most people that interact with that park, it's once a year at the Beer Festival, which is well done, but that's a once-a-year event or they drive their cars and park there and eat fast food in their cars, which to me seems like a lost opportunity for so much and.

00:09:44 Sara Lynch

After getting certified in permaculture, I started to like see things differently and see how interesting it was that it used to be. Oh, it used to just the grass went straight down into the river and there was no, you know, plants in between the river and the actual park. But they've let that grow wild. Whether that I don't know if it was purposeful or through neglect. But in that process there's a really sort of interesting mix of non-native and native species.

00:10:12 Sara Lynch

You know, I go there. I like to eat a lot of wild food, so I go there and like, pick milkweed and make all sorts of stuff with it and. So yeah, when I was writing grants, I just knew that would be a great underutilized space and possibly through doing that project, it could help bring more awareness to that area, which helps make a stronger case for things like. We have, you know, state funding to like put a skate park there and stuff like. So I'm like on the committee for that and we can, you know, can advocate for getting things happening there with like some of the information I did.

00:10:48 Sara Lynch

So it's a big. Big mix of multiple things.

00:10:54 Dan French

Yeah. So you mentioned grants earlier, which primarily fund what you do now. And so when I look for grants, I take 2 approaches. I either know what I want to do and look for a grant that could possibly cover it, or I look for a grant and then create a project to fit it because I know that I can still do something with that. Did you approach the Fall Island investment with one of those strategies or?

00:11:21 Sara Lynch

I would say it's a mix of both. I've done work around Fall Island and the ecology of Fall Island starting, you know, several years ago. And I am pretty aware of grants that are available to artists in the area.

00:11:39 Sara Lynch

I work with local Arts Council. I work with the statewide organization NYSCA and assorted. I also work with a small nonprofit out of Rhode Island that does environmental science art hybrid programming of various kinds.

00:11:57 Sara Lynch

So through that, you know I it was sort of a combination of, you know, I wanna do this, NYSCA grant for individual artists and I wanna do it to further my interests regarding Fall Island and the ecology of Fall Island.

00:12:12 Dan French

And was this the NYSCA grant?

00:12:15 Sara Lynch

Yeah. So this is A NYSCA grant and I could get into the whole specifics of how those work, but you probably don't need all of that.

00:12:23 Dan French

I'll take your word for it. And so there were three public events you held as part of this grant this summer. One of them was with us, and we talked about riparian zones, which for listeners is this buffer zone between bodies of water and land that creates these wet earthly areas.

00:12:46 Dan French

So think of weeds that like a lot of water and can tolerate direct sunlight, or trees that reach out over the river to get direct sunlight, and then their roots stabilize them. So that was ours, and then we did some drawing of repairing plants.

00:13:06 Dan French

And what was the drink we had again?

00:13:09 Sara Lynch

So the previous public event was with Tom Langen and he talked about it for a moment about some cedar trees that were growing there and how he makes cedar tea for his students, and I thought, oh, I know how to make syrup out of conifers, so I'm going to make cedar syrup. Then we just mixed it with a plain seltzer. So it was cedar soda.

00:13:31 Dan French

It was delicious.

00:13:32 Sara Lynch

It was pretty good.

00:13:33 Dan French

So. So there was ours, there was Tom Langen, and remind me of the first.

00:13:37 Sara Lynch

And then the very first one was with Doctor Glenn Johnson from SUNY Potsdam back in May I almost want to say like things were just coming up and it was. It was really helpful for me to get, you know, his take on all the plants that were growing.

00:13:55 Sara Lynch

It was sort of a general, like walk and tree identification and discussion of what was growing there and should it really be growing there or should it not?

00:14:06 Dan French

And during these public workshops. So I talked to I mentioned that we drew what we found, what other art projects were created during this?

00:14:15 Sara Lynch

So I also did some private ones after the one with Glenn Johnson I did, we did ceramics with a local Girl Scout troop and then I did drawing with the Canton Green team, which is Canton Middle School’s environmental group. So they did a bunch of drawings, and then Tom Langan and that group, we did pottery where we pressed plants into the ceramics and then we painted, and then I fired them and that burns out the organic material and you're left with a bowl decorated with, like, leaf outlines.

00:14:52 Dan French

OK, so though you left a leaf in the kiln.

00:14:54 Sara Lynch

Some of them I pulled, I pulled off to the best of my ability because they can mold and then I have like moldy pottery drying in my, you know living room and I don't want that so.

00:15:08 Sara Lynch

It's also, it's not great for the Klan elements to be born burning a lot of organic matter in there, but it's part of the process.

00:15:18 Dan French

And so you created all this art with people at the events. Did you create any of your own?

00:15:24 Sara Lynch

Yeah, I took my example bowl from that project and I did all these drawings of the Racquet River and Fall Island on it at like different scales. I wasn't even planning to do that, but that happened and then I did a weaving out of garbage I found around Fall Island and then some of the trash I found like in the parking lot of the museum that I was partnering with.

00:15:49 Sara Lynch

I saw this like ball of the stuff that comes out of a video cassette and I was like, oh, that's going to be part of my. Yeah, I was like, that's going to be part of my weaving. So I took that and I wove that and there was something.

00:16:05 Sara Lynch

Oh, I made a very strange sculpture with a taxidermied bird, and these ball bearings I found all over the road. It's I took a taxidermy class with and we made we did taxidermy starlings at the Adirondack experience in Blue Mountain Lake and I just. I was like, I want to make something with these ball bearings I collected in the road on Fall Island. And for some reason that all came together.

00:16:31 Sara Lynch

And then I did a mural in the museum that I went way overboard with, but it looks pretty cool so that worked out.

00:16:40 Dan French

Definitely this is the Potsdam Public Museum.

00:16:42 Sara Lynch

Yes, Potsdam public, not to be confused with the Children's Museum, which everybody people say, oh, the museum, you've got the Children's Museum like. No, that's a separate entity and totally different. But both are good.

00:16:56 Dan French

Well, the mural provides a lot for color space for sure. And so all of this art that is created is now on display in the museum. How long is it on display at the museum?

00:17:05 Sara Lynch

Mm hmm, it's up till December 16th. Some things may get left a little longer because of life and the mural is probably gonna be left up indefinitely. I might do some touch ups to it, they may for other exhibits hang something in front of it to cover it, but we're not just gonna, like, paint over and get rid of it so.

00:17:29 Dan French

Was there a reason to collaborate with museum on this? Was there a historical piece for you or.

00:17:36 Sara Lynch

I was on the board of the Museum for six years, so I I've you know, I've worked with them on and off. I've done murals with them since, you know, like I did another a mural about the Racquet River actually previously for like a previous director and, you know, there's a new director and working with them around like how to get NYSCA funding.

00:17:58 Sara Lynch

It's, you know, I'm an artist, but I'm doing these sort of hybrid art science projects so it's kind of tricky like how do I fund this like I you know, I spoke to the director of Tauny traditional art in upstate New York, and they're like, well, we could do a NYSCA program together. And I'm like, but I'm not a traditional artist and like my work is bordering on science and like you know, I.

00:18:19 Sara Lynch

I don't know and that's I just wrote a grant through the Arts Council to fund, you know, a project in Canton that would be similar and I had to write it in such a way that it emphasized the art aspect and like the cultural aspect, I couldn't really get into, like, this will be really interesting from a science perspective because that's like, they don't fund science projects, so it's that's like, you know, I want to do this project, but I have to tailor it to the grant kind of thing. So.

00:18:48 Dan French

Before we talk about Canton I more question for you. I'm not an artist. I just like nature, and I'm wondering if, in hindsight, through your work this year, through your experience creating the art, working with the community, if anything about maybe the way the community engaged with you or about the process of creating the art surprised you or didn't kind of yield the result that you'd expected.

00:19:17 Sara Lynch

I don't know if anything was particularly surprising. I think one of the coolest sort of where things really came together was the ceramics on,e because that you know, I threw the bowls. Nobody had to make their own bowl or anything. And we had a people that worked for the DEC that came and they came and made bowls and it was cool to have them do something.

00:19:40 Sara Lynch

And theirs were really nice they had like layers of like different colors and different patterns and.

00:19:46 Sara Lynch

So it's like that's I'm often thinking about like how can I make it art accessible to people and like, what does that mean that, you know, that encompasses, like, is this affordable? Is this something that somebody that isn't an artist is like, comfortable, like trying out kind of thing so? That was cool.

00:20:03 Sara Lynch

The writers did a really interesting job, I'm glad you got to be there at the opening for the writers because, you know Donald Mcnutt was writing about like, what his experience was like coming to like, your program and stuff like that. I thought that was like a neat, like, for that to come sort of full circle.

00:20:20 Dan French

I'm excited we got mentioned.

00:20:22

Like that's me. I was like, cool, he's still here.

00:20:28 Dan French

Is was a wonderful ceremony. It was great to be there, and you want to keep it going in Canton.

00:20:34 Sara Lynch

Yeah. Well, like thinking about like it on a bigger scale like you know it started like, OK, I'm making art on a small scale about plants and then, PK now I'm thinking about like the ecology and history of this island and I think about like how Potsdam and Canton are these two small towns, very similar, but people like sometimes won't even like go to an event in the other town 'cause they're like, oh, that's just too far.

00:21:00 Sara Lynch

You know, like it's 15 minutes away. There's so many similarities, and yet there's differences. And the park in Canton is called Falls Island, and it has a similar history to Potsdam’s Fall Island, but it's been managed completely differently, and I walk around both and just have a vastly different experience, so I think it would be really interesting to make art about that and invite people on that process.

00:21:31 Dan French

The park in Canton also has existing art pieces that they put up.

00:21:37 Sara Lynch

Yeah. I mean, they have a nice little boardwalk and then they have these sort of like, folk art, hidden animals and creatures that you can like find as you walk around and then across the street they have a sculpture park with things that rotate out.

00:21:55 Sara Lynch

There's talk of building an amphitheater or something of some sort. I don't know how they're going to fit that in, but yes.

00:22:05 Dan French

There’s talk, I think that's been my take on that?

00:22:05 Sara Lynch

Stuff is happening. Stuff happens there, you know, and that's cool. I did, somebody did a Canton Chautauqua on the other side one year, and so it was August and we were hanging out and I was doing air dry clay sculptures with people and the border of that other side of the park is all Poison Ivy.

00:22:26 Sara Lynch

And it was, you know, once I realized I was like, oh, this is not, you know, how is this a park where people spend time when it's covered in Poison Ivy like?

00:22:34 Dan French

And so, for people who might not know the Falls Islands in Canton, there's technically two islands there. The road crosses one of them, Willow Island. And then if you go into the parking lot. In my head I’m imagining this, driving out of town from downtown down the hill, across the bridge, towards that diner on the right, so on the right side of Willow Island is the parking lot to Heritage Park, that is all managed by Grass River Heritage now, which is a local nonprofit in Canton that's charged with maintaining that property and a couple of others along the Grass River. On the left side of the road Grasse River Heritage also takes care of the sculpture garden, but beyond that their jurisdiction ends and the town takes over.

00:23:26 Dan French

So people talk about this amphitheatre or other things on that side of Willow Island.

00:23:30 Sara Lynch

That's the town.

00:23:31 Dan French

That’s the town.

00:23:34 Sara Lynch

Is it the town or the village? Those are different things.

00:23:37 Dan French

That's also true. I did not, don't know. I know that it's not Grasse River Heritage.They're a stakeholder and obviously the rest of Fall Island being under their jurisdiction, but.

00:23:45 Sara Lynch

Yeah, yeah, well, that's, you know, Fall Island in Potsdam it's like there's a church on half of it, and I didn't even get into like you know, working with people on that side because it's there was so much to look at on the park’s side. It's like I'm not even going to get into it too much and that's I feel like similar with so much in Heritage Park that like we could spend, you know, all year just exploring there and that be more than enough.

00:24:19 Dan French

When you wrote the grant for the Falls Island in Canton, were there any key differences in your minds as part of the writing the grant, or that you see for programming?

00:24:31 Sara Lynch

Yeah. Well, I mean, the grant I wrote for the project I did in Potsdam, the focus was actually on the creation of new work. That's what that grant funds. So, it was like thinking focusing on creation of new work but you are required to have a public engagement part and then so the one I just wrote is more a community arts grant, and it's really it's just the teaching.

00:24:55 Sara Lynch

So I figured I'd pull out the public events that people can come to and make art themselves, and then maybe even, you know, the following year I might, I’m Tentatively thinking of doing a NYSCA grant again for new work where I will make work that compares what I've learned between the two islands. So it's like, you know, one year focus on Fall Island, second year focus on falls and then I can compare and contrast after that.

00:25:25 Dan French

And I guess my, the big final question I have about the potential Falls Island event in Canton is pulling back to the nature side of this podcast. There's the waterfalls that are there. There’s the history of the island being the industrial center that it was turned into this, as you pointed out completely differently managed piece of land.

00:25:51 Dan French

Is there a piece of nature there that kind of pulls you in when you're thinking of your art work or programming or is it just the draw being in that outdoor space?

00:26:01 Sara Lynch

I mean, me personally, I love going there on my lunch break because I've worked in Canton several times and there's a rock with like a cedar tree growing on it. People have unfortunately taken huge chunks out of its bark, so I don't know how that poor tree is living there, but that rock is, I think everyone's favorite rock. Whenever I post pictures, people like I love that rock.

00:26:23 Sara Lynch

And there's there's also that, like there's a structure that, like a man-made structure that's continually getting spray painted. There's the discussion of, graffiti is that bad, is it not bad that and I have, I have mixed feelings about it it's kind of is amusing to me sometimes when I see the things written on it. So you know, those are all factors.

00:26:48 Sara Lynch

There's a really nice fiddlehead patch there, like ostrich, head fiddles, ostrich, ferns. You know, so I could do stuff about foraging.

00:26:59 Sara Lynch

I have mixed feelings about doing that too, because you don't want people over picking. You don't want people getting sick. Things of that nature. But yeah, what was the question?

00:27:11 Dan French

No I think you answered it..

00:27:16 Dan French

When you look at Falls Islands in that area and what sticks out in your mind. Either you know from a personal perspective or from a programming perspective.

00:27:24 Sara Lynch

Yeah, I love the mix of the history, the the bridge is so cool. You know, that's I think before they even renovated. I remember like driving by and being like, what's up with that old bridge?

00:27:36 Sara Lynch

That’s really cool. And I work at the historic society in Canton now, and we have really neat photos of like all the buildings and businesses that used to be there and that's, you know, I think similar about Fall Island and Potsdam, like looking at the old maps and like where businesses used to be and factories.

00:27:53 Sara Lynch

It’s really interesting. And it's cool that the the park in Canton, you can still see the remains of stuff there and and how like nature has sort of taken it back over.

00:28:03 Sara Lynch

There's a huge patch of day lilies that has, like, invaded this rocky area, and like day lilies are fairly invasive. But they're also the first thing that comes up in the spring, and they're edible to some degree, which is also neat. So, yeah.

00:28:21 Dan French

A few quick questions for you as an artist and for some background, I had spoken to artists in the Adirondacks during peak color gone back to Canton and realized that my recorder never recorded anything.

00:28:32 Dan French

These are the questions that I asked them, and if they're listening, I apologize, but, the first one being, do you have anything in nature that's your favorite to paint, I guess they were painters, of course, but that your is your favorite to create art around.

00:28:53 Sara Lynch

I don't know. That's tough. I think you know, I really like to experience water, but I can't really make art about it because it's like too hard to really, truly capture.

00:29:04 Sara Lynch

That's how I feel about it, which is, I don't know if that's a a cop out in some way. You know, I can paint it, but it's never, it's going to be like my attempt at depicting it. It's not really gonna capture it.

00:29:20 Dan French

I think I understand that. Like my family comes from the Thousand Islands, so I like sitting next to water and hearing it. But if I were to paint it, you can't hear that sound.

00:29:29 Dan French

The sound is what draws me to it so I understand that, yeah.

00:29:34 Dan French

And my other big question is what does nature mean to you?

00:29:39 Sara Lynch

Oh, I don't. I mean, we're part of nature, so it's like, is it really another thing? Or is it just a category like? It's like that's it's everything, right? Or is it not you know?

00:29:57 Dan French

Well it’s an abstract question for sure.

00:29:58 Dan French

Thank you very much for speaking with me Sara. It's been great working with you so far this year and I imagine that we’ll be working together again in the future, especially if you if you get the grant money that go to Falls Island and Canton so.

00:30:11 Sara Lynch

Yeah.

00:30:12 Dan French

If people don't get a chance to go to the museum and see your work there by December 16th. Where else can they go to see your work?

00:30:22 Sara Lynch

I have a few pieces at Tauny. Not much, So maybe that's not the best advice.

00:30:29 Sara Lynch

I have Instagram where I post you know behind the scenes stuff and pictures. It's @ihavesmallhands because my name is very common. Years ago I went with I have small hands and I just stuck with it.

00:30:49 Sara Lynch

So I have a website saraelynch@saraelynch.com.

00:30:56 Sara Lynch

There's no H on the Sara, so that's, you know that can be confusing for people.

00:31:07 Dan French

Thank you for listening to this episode of Naturally Speaking with Nature Up North, I've been your host, Dan French, and it was an absolute pleasure to speak with Sara about some of the work she's done and the potential for future work next summer with nature and art in the North Country.

00:31:19 Dan French

If you're looking for her Instagram and website, they will be in the comments of this podcast.

00:31:24 Dan French

And if you do listen to this before December 16th of 2024, I encourage you to go to the Potsdam Public Museum and check out her exhibit there. There's a lot of cool history and art intersecting in one space there.

00:31:38 Dan French

And of course last but not least, make sure to get up and get outdoors with Nature Up North.