We will follow in the footsteps of woodland creatures, sing songs, discover stories about plants and animals that live around our camp, and explore other places where they might be found. There will also be time to meet live creatures up close and examine nests, rocks, fossils, feathers, shells, bones and other items from Montshire's natural history collection. Call for details Join Dick Birnie, professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth College, for this adult class. After an introductory lecture outlining the geologic history of New England, we will ride with Dick to a variety of road cuts and rock outcrops that together paint a picture of our region's geological heritage. We'll visit remnants of volcanoes that erupted at one time across the Upper Valley, examine an approximately half-billion year old shoreline of the ancient Atlantic Ocean, and observe rocks in the core of the Green Mountains more than one billion years old.
Every landscape is an open book, full of stories to investigate.
All you need to do is learn how to read it. See firsthand how forest composition changes over time. You'll search for clues of past disturbance and human use, and learn how to tell if fire, hurricane or pastureland were a part of the forest's history. Environments to be explored include part of the Museum's land and time permitting, a second site. This new Tom Wessels workshop will focus on the unique natural history of the exposed domes of granite that grace our northern mountain ranges.