LANDIS PORTRAITS: A Series About the People Behind the Plants at the Arboretum - George Steele9/21/2020 George Steele has played a prominent role in the Arboretum’s nature education program. He is currently a member of the Landis Board of Trustees. He continues the Arboretum’s mission – virtually: several of his workshops for children and families are available for viewing on the Landis website. Here is a more personal look from a Fall 2008 newsletter. - Nolan Marciniec He quoted Rachel Carson: “A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement.” Since 1992, George Steele has worked to tap that sense of wonder in the children and their families who visit the Arboretum. He said that growing up in this day and age is markedly different from his growing up in the wild areas of the Southern Adirondacks near the Hudson River, when he would often disappear into the outdoors for an entire day – until he heard his mother’s whistle, a signal that he needed to return home. His love for Nature was nurtured through his involvement in the Boy Scouts and continued as he moved from camper to counselor. These days, he said, there are so many obstacles between children and Nature – “stranger danger,” the lure of videogames and computers, neighborhoods in which it’s impossible for a child to dig a hole or climb trees or build a fort. George’s family programs are based on the simple pleasures afforded by Nature: finding cicada exoskeletons, or examining moths by night, or catching frogs and salamanders, or examining animal tracks in the snow, or watching hawks soar in the Schoharie Valley. “It all starts when you’re a kid,” he mused. “But who knows where it can go? Maybe the kid will become a herpetologist . . . . Maybe that kid will put together some part of the puzzle and benefit the earth and the environment.” George is a member of the Arboretum’s Education Committee. He earned an undergraduate degree in wildlife biology from SUNY’s College of Environmental Science; he studied environmental education at Antioch Graduate School in Keene, NH. He spent thirteen years working for New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation. For him, the Arboretum is a microcosm. He pronounced the pond behind the barn “the coolest,” since it is exceptionally rich in aquatic microorganisms and macroinvertebra. He loves the Woodland Trail for its natural ecosystem and the cultivated areas at Landis for their incredible diversity of plants from all over the world. “It’s important to know your own backyard, but it’s important to know that the world is a community too,” he insisted. It was a program called “Sounds of Spring,” he remembered, and a horribly uncomfortable, drizzling, cold evening. Only one person showed up, a man with serious hearing impairment who was enthusiastic about his new hearing aid. At one point during the program, a frog croaked out a mating call. The man was astonished and exclaimed, “I never heard that before.” For George, that made the evening all worthwhile. “It is our misfortune that for most of us, that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring [in childhood], is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood," Rachel Caron lamented. It is our good fortune that George Steele restores our vision – and our hearing. And our eternal childhood too.
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