Category: Upcoming Events

The 10-day forecast says 66 degrees and sunny for this coming Saturday, March 6. Perfect for a hike! The Trillium Walk will finally happen.

All systems are go. Dr. Charles Allen, retired botanist and the man after whom this nature preserve is named, plans to be there, along with his wife Susan and daughter Dawn. Scott Meredith of the city of Columbia, which owns the property, plans to join us AND has provided a port-a-john for our comfort! Our birder Roselie Overby is back on tap.

Again, the site is the Charles Allen Nature Preserve in the Copenhagen Hills near Columbia. Don’t bother with your GPS; it will not find this site. The map below will get you through Columbia, and once you’re on Fisher Rd. headed out of town, just keep coming until you see my black Honda CRV parked on the left side of the road.

I plan to be there shortly past 9:30 and hope to head off on our hike at 10 sharp. If you would like my cell # just in case you have trouble, please email me at bjkauffman@gmail.com. BTW, CenLa Master Naturalists, there’s another way to get in if you are coming from the south. Email me if you want those directions.

I cannot be absolutely certain that the trillium will still be blooming. I’m hoping the cold weather set them back but didn’t kill them! The red buckeye should be starting to bloom. Here at home, the freeze turned some of the leaves black on my red buckeye, but the bloom spikes are forming anyway.

I’ll be looking for crane fly orchid leaves to mark the sites for a visit in August when they’re blooming. There’s also a cucumber magnolia–a tree you do not see very often–plus a green ash–and plenty of other wonderful sights, not the least of which is the Ouachita River from the overlook.

Be sure to bring water and snacks if you need them. We will most likely be on the trail for 2 hours. Hiking boots or sturdy sneakers recommended as a short portion of the trail is somewhat steep and the trillium we are seeking grow on the slope of the ridge.

See you Saturday. This hike will be all the more delicious for having been twice delayed!

So… it’s going to be cold, at least early. But the Trillium Walk is on! Don’t let a few degrees chill your enthusiasm. You know Louisiana. By the time we head into the woods, it’ll be warming up. Date changed to March 6, Probably won’t be cold!

Dress in layers so you don’t overheat as we walk. We will have a short but somewhat steep segment of trail. It’s not rocky, just covered with leaf litter. When we get to the top of the ridge, it’s easy walking and views of the river are wonderful. (See below.)

I’ll be at the entrance to the Charles Allen Nature Preserve by about 9:30 a.m. this Saturday (2/13/2021 3/6/21). Dr. Charles Allen himself plans to join us, along with his wife Susan and daughter Dawn. We’ll start into the woods at 10 sharp. I have also invited CenLa Chapter folks.

Please note that the map shows you how to get through Columbia. I trust you can get to Columbia on your own. And once you leave Columbia on Fisher Rd. you can’t go wrong. Just stay on Fisher Rd. and keep coming until you find cars pulled off on the left side of the road. It’s about 2.5 miles from the last intersection at the edge of town.

Again, hoping our birders will join us because it is Great Backyard Bird Count weekend, and this site is under-birded. Last I heard, Roselie was coming and she is in charge of keeping the bird list.

NEXT UP: Don’t forget! The Events Committee has scheduled a First Quarter zoom meeting March 7 at 2 p.m. Charles Paxton will distribute an invitation to the zoom meeting. Erin Cox, USWF Refuge Coordinator, will be our speaker and we will have a business meeting.

Our Events Committee has been at work! And they have a lot of great ideas. Here’s what’s coming:

Feb. 13, 9:45 – Noonish: Trillium Walk & GBBC – Calling all birders to join us on the Trillium Walk! It turns out that Saturday, Feb. 13, falls within the dates of the Audubon Society’s Great Backyard Bird Count. So we’re going to participate. In addition to spotting trillium, red buckeye and crane fly orchids (see header photo), we will be looking and listening for birds.

I plan to be at the entrance to the Charles Allen Nature Preserve by 9:30 a.m. We want to walk into the woods at 10 sharp. Please see my earlier post here for a map and details. Again I encourage some of you to make plans to meet in Columbia to leave a vehicle in the parking lot there and carpool out to the Preserve, where parking is limited.

BTW, I called the town of Columbia, which bought the property from ULM last year. They are excited that we are using this natural area as intended.

March 7, 2020, 2 p.m.: First Quarter Meeting – Zoom will be the venue for our first quarter meeting this year. (It is my hope and prayer that by 2nd Quarter we will be able to meet in person! But we will stay safe…)

The Events Committee has invited Erin Cox, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Refuge Coordinator over several refuges in our area to be our speaker. Erin will give us an overview of the USFWS, then zero in on the refuges she manages and what we can do to help in fulfilling our mission as conservationists and educators on conservation. After Erin’s presentation, we will have a brief business meeting.

In planning: The Events Committee shared ideas they are working on and I am delighted and excited. These include:

Dec. 5 – Fourth Quarter meeting at Kiroli Park, hosted by our own Stuart Hodnett, who now is parks coordinator for West Monroe. In addition to our meeting, we will go birding in the park. Of course, some of us will also be distracted by the other flora and fauna of the park! Details to come.

Second & Third Quarterly Meetings – These will probably be in May and October respectively. Ideas being considered include asking our own Kelby Ouchley and his brother Keith Ouchley of the Nature Conservancy to lead us on an expedition to the Molicy Unit. Yes!

Additional ideas for meetings or seasonal events include asking Gary Stringer to tell us about his whales at the ULM Museum and inviting the new manager at Tensas NWR to talk about the refuge and the bears.

Is there anything in the above that does not totally excite you? I am so on board with all of this and deeply grateful to the Events Committee for their leadership. Here’s who they are: Charles Paxton, Chair, Suzanne Laird Dartez, Stuart Hodnett, Amy Ouchley, Ann Smith. Kim Paxton took notes for them because, you know, with the Paxtons you usually get a two-fer!

Woohoo! It’s gonna be a good year.

A few years ago, I began making an annual pilgrimage to the Charles Allen Nature Preserve near Columbia to see trillium in bloom. I love them! So beautiful and so ephemeral. The window for seeing them is short.

This year, in part because we have not been able to get together much, it occurred to me to invite y’all to come along. We will be outdoors. I am happy to wear a mask outdoors if that will make you more comfortable. We can physically distance without a problem.

So…. Saturday, February 13, is the day. The entrance to the Charles Allen Nature Preserve is on Fisher Road, a bit south and east of Columbia. There’s a map below because I do not believe your phone GPS will recognize that name. Meet me there. I will get there at 9:45 a.m. and plan to head into the woods at 10 a.m.

In fact, there’s not a lot of parking at the entrance and Fisher Road doesn’t have much in the way of shoulders, so if you are comfortable carpooling with someone or meeting someone in Columbia and just carpooling the short distance out to the site, that would be good. There’s a school along the route through Columbia and leaving a car there would be easy.

Hiking in the preserve is not extremely difficult but it does involve somewhat steep climbing on layers of leaves and pine straw for short distances. Wear suitable shoes. After we’ve seen the trillum, we’ll hike to the river overlook for a fab view. I estimate we will be in the woods for about two hours.

In addition to trillium, we will see red buckeye just starting to bloom and, if we look carefully, perhaps violets in bloom and crane fly orchid leaves, which I plan to mark with plastic tape so we can come back in August and look for flowers.

And who knows what else? I have invited Dr. Charles Allen, after whom the place is named. He didn’t promise but he said he’d try to come. If he makes it, I promise, you will get an impromptu lesson in native plants of Louisiana.

I have also invited the CenLa Master Naturalists and… this is a family fun day! Your kids old enough to hike are welcome! And bring a friend.

If you have trouble finding the place, call me: 318-372-8117.

We’re going to have some fun AND stay completely safe while doing it!

The Louisiana Master Naturalist Association Board of Directors recently decided that a face-to-face Rendezvous in April of 2021 was still too dangerous. Not enough of us are vaccinated yet!

So we postponed the face-to-face gathering for another year but decided to do some fun things anyway, all completely safely. April will be Rendevous month. We will have three zoom meetings of an hour and a half each spread out over the month of April, at least one of which will feature a keynote address by our Dorman Award winner.

Other activities we are working on include a photo/video competition, a scavenger hunt and a citizen science project. These will be designed so that you can do them individually or with small groups outdoors using proper pandemic precautions.

Please note that the Facebook group is a private group because only Louisiana Master Naturalists can participate in Rendezvous. When you get to it, you will be asked to confirm that you are a member of an LMN chapter before you will be admitted to the group.

I and Charles & Kim Paxton are on the planning committee and much planning remains to be done. For the moment, however, I urge each of our members to go to the Rendezvous 2021 Facebook page and ask to join. That is where we will post info as plans develop and where we will feature activities as they happen.

Here’s a link to the group: LMNA Rendezvous 2021.