Yesterday’s story featuring the volunteers at Oak Grove Nature Center mentions a letter they received from a little girl in 1996 — rife with misspellings, but sending a clear message that many children know very little about nature.
Here’s what that letter looked like:
One other interesting side story:
The article quotes longtime volunteer Martha Mallery, who remembers going on pack trips in the Sierra Nevada with her family. It was there that she discovered her love of nature — plants, in particular.
Mallery says she climbed Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48 states, when she was 4 years old.
Although she must have been carried most of that way, she admits.
Either way, having been there three times myself, a 4-year-old standing atop Mt. Whitney is pretty remarkable. It’s hard to imagine that Mallery, who struggles today with asthma and has difficulty catching her breath, was once there herself.
“I remember, the last leg of it (the hike), my father kept saying, ‘There’s gonna be ice cream at the top,’” she said. “That’s what kept me going.”
Weren’t you disappointed once you got up there, I asked?
“They gave me snow and said, ‘This is as close as we can come,” Mallery said with a laugh.
