Indiana state park naturalist enjoys inspiring, teaching next generation of Hoosiers
This is the first edition of our Scrub Hub with a new format. A good marketer might say 'Same Name. New Flavor.' We are reaching out across Indiana to speak one-on-one with Hoosiers who have something to say about our natural environment and presenting those interviews in this new Q&A style. So, if you know anyone who should be features, please let us know.
Turtles swimming in tanks greet guests at the Fort Harrison State Park Visitors' Center tucked away on the former military base.
Aerial photographs of the property from the 1930s hang on one of the walls of the center where Emilie Sweet, the park's interpretive naturalist, prepares for her daily work.
Each day is a little different for Sweet, who could spend them leading kids through the trails or teaching courses for the Indiana Master Naturalist class or clearing out invasive plants in the woods.
Sweet has been the park's interpretive naturalist for the last three years and is the first person for our new Q&A series in the Scrub Hub. We met with Sweet in June as the summer heat started to set on Central Indiana. Her answers are edited for brevity and clarity.
SUGGEST A SUBJECT: Know someone doing good things for Indiana's environment and want to see them featured here? Email Karl and Sophie at: karl.schneider@indystar.com and Sophie.Hartley@indystar.com to let us know.
There's a couple of different things. If I know I'm going to show a big group of kids my rat snake, I really enjoy that. The looks on their faces when I pick up the snake and show them is just priceless. They're either like 'Ewwww' or they're like 'Oh my gosh, look at that' and it's really fun to just see the differences and kind of breakthrough to some of them. Some of them might be scared to do a two-finger touch on the snake, but at the end of it they finally do it and they realize it's not that scary. I love doing reptile programs, and if I know something like that's coming up then I get really excited.
And, if I know I have a free day and I can do resource management on the park and just go out and work on invasive management in our park, I really get excited about that because it's getting out in the field and being able to step away from the office and be outside.
The more I learn, the more I want to spread that knowledge to others. Doing programs helps me learn as well because that's always been my thing — I really enjoy learning. I like looking things up and I like going out in the field and I like learning how to identify a new plant and things like that. And I want to share that with other people. I want to be able to open doors for people that might not know much about this area.
Some people don't know the history of places as well, and that's a big part of my job, too, is just telling people about the history of our parks.
Something that I noticed about myself and learned about in school is plant blindness. (It's where) you look and just see a sea of green. So, learning how to stop and look at an individual tree or an individual plant, anything really, is helpful.
Just noticing things that you don't notice before. I really make it a priority, especially in the spring when I know things are starting to pop up, I make it a priority to every day to stop and look around and see what looks different based on yesterday. I'll walk a trail and see what's different as far as our spring ephemerals like: which ones popping up, or maybe I see a blood root that is coming up and leaves are curled around it's stem and there's a bud and I know the flower is going to bloom soon. So, I try to go out every day and see if I can catch that one specific flower blooming.
You slow down and look at things and notice them, and then you catalog it and then the next year just go back and do the same thing and then you're going to find patterns and you're going to find things that maybe shift and maybe don't and it's interesting to notice stuff like that and be able to tell other people: 'Oh well, if you wait a week, the red buds are going to be blooming on this day, so just wait.'
One of my favorite things about bats is that between Indiana bats, if you're comparing them to a little brown bat: one way that researchers can distinguish between the two of them is that Indiana bats have short toe hairs and little brown bats have long toe hairs. I just think that's the funniest thing.
IndyStar's environmental reporting project is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
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