Standish Price Wild Food Interpretive Trail

NOW OPEN!

for more information about the location of the trail, go to holidayhillscamping.com

This is (as far as I know) the only interpretive trail in the United States that focuses on wild edibles. With 118 stops featuring 110 species, including 71 edible ones, it is also among the largest interpretive trails of any kind in the country. There are thousands of interpretive trails, but this one is unique in its conception and purpose. Rather than catering to the casual visitor as most trails do, this one is meant to be part of a long-term educational process for its users. In other words, it is a classroom where you, the user, decide when to learn, what to learn, and at what pace. It is essentially a course with no instructor for students of edible wild plants and field botany in general.
     This innovative set-up provides two enormous advantages to the user. First, because it eliminates the presence of an instructor, it is cost-effective; a traditional weekend botany field course of this caliber would cost hundreds of dollars. Second, it is convenient: the student comes whenever he or she wishes. And third, because there is no instructor, it forces the participant to learn rather than listen.
     This latter point deserves deeper consideration. As a long-time teacher about edible wild plants, I have come to the conclusion that face-to-face instruction in field classes is simply the wrong way to learn. I have been shocked by how ineffective this actually is—by how little information is retained by students over the long-term. The pace, the method, and the content of traditional field courses are ineffective because they simply do not match real learning styles. They cram too much information into too little time and promote passive listening rather than active learning. This is a recipe for forgetting rather than remembering. Traditional courses do not require the student to observe or examine the plant, which are the real pathways to learning about them.
     The Standish Price Interpretive Trail is designed to allow students to slow down and learn at a realistic pace, as well as to facilitate the observation and interaction that promote effective learning. All of this is provided in a perfect setting: a friendly campground in the wild North Woods.
     The trail is located at Holiday Hills Campground on Hultman Lake in Ogema, Wisconsin. This is a small, quiet, private campground that welcomes all naturalists, fishermen, and silent sports enthusiasts. Within short walking distance of the Ice Age National Trail and a few miles from extensive public lands, Holiday Hills is a perfect base for exploring the region’s beautiful hills and forests. For more information, go to holidayhillscamping.com.

Using the Trail

In function, the S.P. trail is much like other interpretive trails that employ a guidebook (as opposed to plaques posted on site). As you walk along the trail, you will see numbered markers that correspond to the entries in this guidebook. At each stop you can read the appropriate entry to learn about the natural history and edibility of the plant indicated. Being longer than most interpretive trails, this one would require many hours to take in. There is no reason to walk the entire trail in one day; nobody can learn plants that fast anyways.
     As you look at each marker, you may need to read the description in the guidebook to determine which of the plants in the vicinity of the stake is its subject. You can also confirm this by looking up the plant in one of your field guides. While the trail focuses on edible plants, it also covers many non-edible plants. My philosophy is that, in order to learn edible plants, you must learn plants in general. (However, all collecting of plants is forbidden along the trail.)
     You may notice some of the stakes missing or out of order. As the plants along the trail change and die, we may need to move a stake to a better location. Although the numbers on the trail may be out of order, they can still be easily referenced in this guidebook.      
     The trail is not intended to be used only once, nor is it intended to be used by itself; it is designed to be part of an active learning process engaged in by those wishing to learn plant identification. Users of the trail should own several field guides and plant references. (A list of recommended references is provided.) Perhaps you’d want to carry Michigan Trees with you on one visit, and Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide on another.

     After learning new plants on the S.P. Trail, you’ll want to commit your identification of each species to memory by finding and recognizing the plant on your own. You can do this on the S.P. trail, as many of the plants occur repeatedly along it. But you won’t want to miss some of the other spectacular hikes available in the area. Enjoy the vast public forest lands and beautiful lakes in the area, see some wildlife, and look for plants that you have just learned. Compare them with your field guides to make sure you have correctly identified them.
      After a few years and a dozen visits to the trail, you will have learned a vast amount about botany, ecology, and edible wild plants. Have fun!  

Aquatic Plants
     The last few plants in this guidebook are floating or emergent aquatic species. For obvious reasons, these plants are not marked with stakes. The guidebook will help direct you to these species, which are all rather easy to find along the lakeshore or within the lake. The descriptions can help you confirm that you have found the right plant, however, you should confirm your identification with one or more of the field guides listed below.

Trail Membership
     As an enthusiastic user of nature trails my whole life, I have seen a few consistent problems with most of them: they are rarely maintained over time, they are often inaccurate, and they are typically very short or contain few stops. The S.P. Trail has been envisioned and designed to alleviate these problems. It was put in with great care and attention to botanical details, so that you aren't reading about blue cohosh and looking at columbine. It will be regularly maintained and updated, so that you don't stand at a marker looking for a plant that hasn't been there for fifteen years. And it contains enough stops to keep you occupied ALL DAY, and longer, if you take the time to observe each plant, read about it, and search for additional specimens. 
     While many people prefer interpretive trails with plaques posted on-site, these plaques create several problems. Becasue they are expensive, they limit the numbers of stops on a trail. This expense also limits the erection of such plaques to high-traffic locations, such as busy state parks, increasing the frequency of vandalism of both the interpretive plaques and the plants along the trail. Becasue they are permanent, they limit the plants that can be covered to long-lived perennials such as trees and shrubs. When plants die, these permanent plaques stay in place, creating trail inaccuracies and confusing users. The solution to these dilemmas is to use a guidebook system with easily-moved markers that can be regularly updated to reflect the changes in the landscape.
     Most nature trails are free to the user but are paid for through taxes. Like most free things, they tend to be underappreciated, underfunded, and poorly done. We have put a lot of effort into creating this "walking classroom" and are asking only a small fee from the user. $25 is the cost of lifetime membership (for individuals or married couples and their minor children) to the trail--you will receive a free guidebook with membership and can learn from the trail any time the campground is open. For those of you who anticipate a single visit to the trail, you can use this unique learning resource for the going rate of a boat launch: $5 per day. Just stop at the office for a loaner copy of the guidebook.