AURORA —Among the snow-covered cottonwoods that drooped around the paths at the Morrison Nature Center, groups of children pulled downed branches and dragged them to a hillside clearing where they were stomped and crunched into manageable building material.
“The most important thing to know about building a shelter in the woods is having a structure,” said Mercedes Martinez, 11. “If you don’t have a good structure, your shelter is going to fall apart. It’s like in a house: you have to have that main, supportive beam or your house is going to fall down.”
A few yards away, Ben Walczak, 11, was lying on his stomach in the snow under a small lean-to that he was building next to a frozen stream. He had collected armfuls of fluffy cattails and was using a log to shred off the brown cotton in a pile so that he could scoop it up in his gloves and pack it into the open spaces of his stick structure.
“I think the most important part of building a winter shelter is insulation,” Ben said. “It’s going to be cold in here, so you need to cover it so that it isn’t just a pile of sticks.”
The Winter Break Nature Fun camp at the Morrison Nature Center at Star K Ranch in northeast Aurora has been held, complete with its signature snow shelter building activity, for the last three years.
“We do different activities at the camps each year to change it up,” said Liz Wickard, an Aurora parks naturalist who runs the Morrison Nature Center. “We get a ton of the kids who do this every year, and so we try to keep it new — except shelter building, because they love it.”
But Aurora’s oldest nature preserve is offering new educational seminars and opportunities for visitors this year, and it’s getting ready for some expansion, as well.
Last year, Aurora bought approximately 36 vacant acres east of the preserve, about halfway out to Airport Boulevard. That land is currently off-limits to visitors, being rehabbed with natural vegetation. The city also bought another 4 acres on the west side of the preserve that was the old Emil-Lene’s Sirloin House on Smith Road.
“The building will eventually come down and then we’re going to use the space for more parking,” Wickard said. “It’s exciting to see it expanding so that we can serve more people.”
Aurora also bought Confluence Open Space next to Coal Creek Arena at 20255 E. Sixth Ave. a couple of years ago for the implementation of the forthcoming Triple Creek Trail, which will connect the High Line Canal and Sand Creek trails.
“When completed, we’ll be able to connect all of the trail users to miles and miles of regional trail, the Aurora Sports Park, the Beck Recreation Center, Star K Ranch and many more,” said Tracy Young, manager of planning, design and construction at Aurora Parks, Recreation and Open Space.
Confluence Open Space is also closed to the public, but Wickard holds a nature walk there in March.
“There’s several old gravel mining pits right there, so it’s a great place to go see birds and wildlife,” she said. “The cool thing about our bird walks and nature walks is that they’re held at Ponderosa Preserve and Confluence Open Space, which are not open to the public. They’re newer open spaces, and they don’t have any amenities, and so the only way you can go there is with a naturalist or a ranger.”
are Family Nature Games and Dr. Mike’s Bag of Bugs.
Nature Games is a family-oriented activity that challenges kids and their parents to test their knowledge of local species and plants, and the bug seminar is hosted by entomologist Michael J. Weissmann, co-founder and former curator of the Butterfly Pavilion and Insect Center in Westminster.
Weissmann’s program features live insects and arthropods like scorpions and spiders.
“He’s awesome,” Wickard said. “He’s so funny and so smart. We are really excited to start doing more guest seminars along these lines.”
Wickard is also mulling plans to expand the center’s educational programming to kids older than 12 or 13, which is the approximate cutoff age for programs at Star K Ranch now.
Some of her ideas, which she hopes to test in the summer, include community service projects for older kids who have exhausted the basic introduction to nature classes over the years.
“It’s all still in my head right now, but it’s the kind of growth that I’d like to move toward,” she said.
Megan Mitchell: 303-954-2650, mmitchell@denverpost.com or @Mmitchelldp
