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There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.
- Linda Hogan

Bluets (Photo by Colleen Kopp)

The Nature of Connecticut is a place where conversation and information about the natural world can bloom and grow.
Posts vary from nature in the news, to nature center reviews, hiking trips and tips, poetry, photos, ways to "be green" and ways to get involved in the conservation movement.

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(For blog's best results: take computer outside, sit in the grass, look at the sky, listen to birds and enjoy the world around you.)


Roaring Brook Nature Center

Saw-whet Owl at Roaring Brook Nature Center (photo from http://www.sciencecenterct.org/rbncpage/index.html)

Thaddeus J. Froio pointed excitedly to a mass of sticks carefully placed near the ceiling of the room at the Roaring Brook Nature Center.
“Did you see our eagle’s nest?” he asked a visitor.

Froio, 25, volunteers at the center because of his love for birds and his passion for children to understand and explore nature around them. “To live is to be in nature — to be in touch with what God put here. You separate yourself from nature, you separate yourself from life,” said Froio.

The Roaring Brook Nature Center is a hidden treasure of Canton, Connecticut. It offers extensive programs and opportunities for children to learn about the natural world. The recently renovated center has fantastically painted wood cutouts and nature scenes with glass hideaways filled with both living and preserved creatures, including wood frogs, snapping turtles, stuffed muskrats, blue jays, skunks, chipmunks and coyotes. Rows of snakes in glass cages line the walls of one room.

Volunteers at the center rehabilitate injured wildlife and the center is a home for several creatures that would not survive if released. Paths and trails used for hiking, bird watching or snow-shoeing wind through the woods behind the center.

Froio stood looking at the rehabilitation cages as he further explained his view of the importance of nature. Shawnee, “Big Shawn”, an injured bald eagle, blinked back at him. “If you limit the time a child has with nature, you’re limiting what that child could have in life,” Froio said.

Most of his appreciation for nature comes from observation. His appreciation was influenced by how his family regarded the natural world and encouraged him to be part of it.

“To see the course of evolution that God has used to make a creature raise above gravity is mind blowing,” Froio said, “whose dream isn’t being able to fly?”