Hopscotch

wooded wonder

Even if you’ve never seen Patrick Dougherty’s sculpture before, you’re still innately familiar with it.

Just think back to your childhood, he says. Then look at the playful elements in “Hopscotch,” the soaring, sweeping, made-fromsticks sculpture he finished here in August. Standing beneath Wild Walk amidst a stand of Scotch pine, the 20-foot-tall sculpture is a big-as-life fort, a maze, a place to play hide-and-seek. He didn’t do it all himself: Dougherty and his son, Sam, worked with more than 100 volunteers to build the stickwork creation. Some cut down the maple saplings, others stripped them of leaves, and still more came for four-hour shifts to painstakingly weave thousands of branches into their final form.

Dougherty has worked around the world, but each creation is unique to its surroundings. Here, he was able to incorporate trees

in the forest into the sculpture itself. And its peaked towers and gaping skylights were included to accommodate winter snows.

On the evening the sculpture was unveiled, dozens of grownups wandered through and around the sculpture, gawping at its scale. But he knows our youngest visitors are in on its deepest secrets.

“I expect that kids, who know that sticks are imaginative objects, are not surprised at this at all,” Dougherty says. “They would build it if they could get enough good sticks.”

See Hopscotch all winter long. Timed tickets and advanced reservations are required (members included). Make your reservation at wildcenter.org today.