History in the Field: Taking my Environmental History course outside

This week in my Environmental History course we took a field trip to one of Trent's nature reserves.  The presence of 12 nature reserves on campus is one of the things that make Trent such a congenial place to study environmental history, and we try to take full advantage of them.  We visited the "wildlife sanctuary": the largest of the campus nature reserves -- about 100 hectares of forest, wetland, and abandoned farm fields.  Lots of environmental history there!

I began the class in the classroom, reviewing some key ideas about landscape interpretation, emphasizing the need for a sense of wonder, as well as an awareness of the regional context, as represented in the local geological and material history:

Then we looked at a few historical resources that can be combined with field observations, and discussed what we can learn from them.  Today these included historic topographic maps and aerial photos:

And then we were off on our walk.  During the next two hours we stopped at about a dozen sites in and near the nature reserve, discussing along the way various historical episodes, from the most recent institutional history of Trent, to the glacial history of the landscape, 8000-10000 BP.  These also included the history of agriculture in the region, the interpretation of ecological succession, traces of the local timber industry, and other episodes.  Here's a slide show presenting many of the sites we looked at.