Outdoor fun for ALL Hartley’s nature camps are just one way to enjoy this Duluth gem

BY ANDREA NOVEL BUCK

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID BALLARD

Nature-based preschool, summer day camp, school field trips, or just a family outing to hike, mountain bike, fish, cross-country ski, snowshoe or walk the dog –have your children experienced Duluth’s 660-acre Hartley Park?

On any given day, 100 children explore the park, which is bounded by Duluth’s Kenwood, Hunter’s Park and Woodland neighborhoods. Most participate in structured programs like

Hartley Nature Center’s preschool (current enrollment 92) and school field trips (7,000 students visit per school year). During summer, the fun ramps up with week-long day camps hosting 1,000 children, ages 3 through 12, and some teen “counselors in training.”

Most of Hartley Nature Center’s programming is aimed at getting kids outside and roaming the woods, just like we did many years ago. “Hartley has always been that way, kids running around and having adventures,” said Executive Director Tom O’Rourke.

Outdoors In Any Weather

On a cold January day, Hartley Nature Center’s preschoolers bundled up and set off outside, running on a trail behind their teacher. Their destination was a space in the woods where they would kick-sled and play husky pups, simulating barks and howls of the dogs they had seen in a video about the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon. Indoor lessons earlier that day had been focused on learning the letter O and number 29 and other things that will prepare them for kindergarten.

On the way back to their classroom, they gathered around in a circle at the edge of the trail to make a list of the highlights of their day. “I’ve seen several areas where dogs have peed in the snow, so don’t eat the snow,” Lead Preschool Teacher Dani French advised one of the children. Kick-sledding ranked No. 1 — as echoed by several until urged to name something different — then running and playing husky pups.

The preschoolers “go outside every day in every weather,” O’Rourke said. And they have “the whole of the park to play and explore in,” Preschool Director Kaitlin Erpestad added. On any given day, they might fish in the pond, hike in the woods nearby or simply play freely in the park’s Nature Playscape.

“Kids don’t get to do what we did as children in our backyards,” said Erpestad, who designed, opened and licensed the center’s preschool. She recites a litany of reasons for nature programming in preschools: it helps children’s emotional well-being, physical well-being and academic learning.

Erpestad, who skied in Hartley’s forest with her family as a child and ran its trails as a high schooler, is honored to have the job that she does. “We have such happy kids,” she said.

The preschool offers four half-day sessions and two full-day sessions for 3- to 5-year-olds, running September through May. Registration is in January, and there usually is a waiting list.

Exploring On Your Own

Don’t have need for a supervised outdoors program for your kids? Then consider some of these recommended family outings from O’Rourke:

• Hike up Rock Knob and take in the majestic view. It’s about a half-mile trek from the Nature Center building with a climb that’s “like Mount Everest” for a preschooler.

• Bring fishing rods and tackle and fish Hartley Pond. Your children might just reel in a black bull head, perch or golden shiner.

• Glide or crunch along the snowcovered trails in winter. The Nature Center has all sizes of cross-country skis, snowshoes and kick-sleds available to rent anytime the building is open.

• Explore the Nature Playscape, an open space behind the Nature Center building that’s filled with sticks, dirt, sand, a stream and other natural elements for self-directed play.

Most importantly, O’Rourke advised, allow time on your parent agenda to let your children’s natural enthusiasm and curiosity be the guide, rather than hurrying along to a specific destination or accomplishment. He recalled taking his then-young son on a trip to Zion National Park in Utah. He gave him a camera, expecting photos of the park’s majestic views and landscapes. He got lots of blurry pictures of lizards, which had captured his son’s interest, instead.

“It’s important to have patience, to let kids explore,” he said.

Education staff for Hartley Nature Center include (from left): Kaitlin Erpestad, preschool director and lead teacher; Tiffany Smith, education director; and Tom O’Rourke, executive director.

Summer At Hartley

Mid-June through mid-August, Hartley Nature Center runs 40 different week-long camps that allow kids to explore specific interests: birding, fishing, bugs, navigation, locally grown food. Most are half-day camps with enticing names like Water Stompers, Dirt!, Scramblin’ Scientists and Nature’s Ninjas for the younger set, and Survival, Water Engineering and Geocaching for the older. A select few, Boys in Boats! and Girls in the Outdoors!, are full day and include an overnight.

Tiffany Smith guides the educational component to the Nature Center’s programs and specifically leads the Mountain Biking camps. “We start with wide, flat trails and work our way onto rockier, more narrow trails with hills,” Smith said. Each day the bikers work on a skill: balance, bike and body awareness, riding while looking ahead instead of down, climbing and descending hills. By week’s end, they bike the park’s Guard Rail Loop, a 2-mile trail with a 286-foot climb and descent.

FORT, another popular camp, gets kids building forts from materials they collect in the woods. “I think it’s inherent to childhood,” Smith said of fort-building. “It’s also great cooperative learning and wonderful imaginative play.” And, the big wind storm two summers ago left huge root balls in the air and lots of downed limbs and sticks.

Guiding Hartley Into The Future

That wind storm closed the park for three months, although the Nature Center continued to provide programming in a more limited space. It destroyed the center’s yurt and playscape, which have been rebuilt. It downed 1,000 trees on the trails, which have been cleared and reopened. “It visually changed the park,” O’Rourke said. Most storm damage off trails was left as is, though St. Louis County plans to log some downed trees in the quadrant of the park nearest Howard Gnesen Road and Ridgeview Country Club.

Hartley Nature Center plans to expand its building in the next few years. An addition of two classrooms, a library/meeting room and new restrooms on the back would provide adequate space to serve all its current programs and expand its field trip, camp and preschool offerings.

The Nature Center is in the early stages of a $2 million capital campaign to raise money for the 4,800-square-foot expansion. It recently put up for sale eight acres across Woodland Avenue it was given after a fire destroyed a home there.

Nature Center leaders also envision more adult programming and work to keep Hartley Park ecologically healthy. Since 2014, the center has improved trails, selectively thinned red pine stands, replanted pollinator meadows, planted 3,500 new trees and worked to remove invasive species such as buckthorn.

But the emphasis on getting children into Hartley Park is most important.

“If you want to protect our parks, you have to have a generation that uses them,” O’Rourke said. — MDT

Andrea Novel Buck, a professional journalist for 25 years, is a Duluth freelance writer and Youth Education Director at Temple Israel.