Redesigning Our Future

By: Leah Picciano During an evening during Environmental Summit 2013, there was an activity planned outside. Unfortunately, Mother Nature released a rainstorm that showed no sign of stopping. The activity wasn't cancelled, we just did it inside, which is when things got rather tangled. We were instructed to form a circle, cross our arms, and then grab the hands of the person across from you, (not the same person's hands for each of yours, and not the person's hand next to you), and then work to untangle yourselves without letting go of the persons' hands. The end result should be you standing in a circle next to the two people that you are holding hands. If you can do that, you should try doing it without talking - or at least one person talking.  Getting slightly tangled  Getting more tangled  Starting out and getting tangled up to almost to the point of no return.  Almost finished.  Having fun despite the knots.  The extremes...

By: Raul Barreda and Morgan King Sarah Moore explains the different events of  Ecolympics before all the craziness got started.  The teams were divided up into their focus groups and competed against each other.  And the Events are.... Challenge #1-Enviromental Telephone  Challenge #2-Animal Noises Challege #3-Rock, Paper, Scissors... make sure you recycle the paper!  Challenge #4-Eco Dancing  Challege #5-Recycling Races And the Winners are.... 1st Place- Invasive Alien Plants and Animals 2nd Place- A Backbone for Conservation 3rd Place- Scared Places

By: Leah Picciano The turtle on the trail. Unfortunately for him, he was too cute to ignore. The Environmental Summit of 2013 spent a whole morning in the preserve. We saw many things, including a turtle, many spiders, salamanders, and plenty of mosquitoes. One of our more interesting finds were the turtle, which stayed still enough for us to get a close-up of him hiding in his shell. The turtle is a Eastern Painted Turtle common from Canada to Georgia and goes as far west as the Appalachians. They are very popular as pets. The large salamander that one of the campers caught afterwards . The salamanders were part of the biomimicry, but once we were finished, one of the campers caught a very large salamander, and we were able to hold it and take plenty of pictures of it. The spiders got us tangled in their webs, since they were all over the paths and in the woods. The mosquitoes were everywhere, despite all the spray that we put on. After the biomimicry when we had some...