outdoors

After a lengthy search spanning several months, I eventually found just the right tree — growing, of all places, on my own property 100 yards behind the house. About a dozen feet high, it was a thin sugar maple that had grown straight up for about 3 feet, spiraled for 2 feet, then grew straight again. Perfect! 

Joy lives in Duncan Falls, a sleepy town nestled against the rolling hills along the Muskingum River southeast of Zanesville, where she’s a longtime member of New Concord-based Guernsey-Muskingum Electric Cooperative. When they finally reconnected, Brad noticed she was suffering some health issues, and clearly needed a change. 

Poison ivy wears many disguises. It can appear as a single plant, a group of plants, a shrub, a ground vine, or even a climbing vine. And its infamous “leaves of three” can be as small as a 50-cent piece or as large as your hand. In addition, different-shaped leaves (actually leaflets) —their margins smooth, lobed, or toothed — can appear on the same plant. 

The idea for the program arose organically, says Harrison, owner and operator of Harrison Farm. (Her secondary title, she says, is “chief minion” to the goats.) She met yoga instructor Dana Bernstein in 2016 while she was planning Bernstein’s wedding, and the two hit it off. 

The group’s name is a clever allusion to Cincinnati’s history as well as the group’s reason for existence. “Cincinnati used to be the pork-processing capital of the U.S.,” says longtime member John Graves of Fairfield, a retired registered nurse, who also explains that “P.I.G.S. Aloft” stands for “People Interested in Getting Stuff Aloft.”

“We don’t collect dues or elect officers,” Graves says. “We just get together to fly our kites and have fun. Anyone is welcome to join us.” 

Gross, a 45-year member of Mount Gilead-based Consolidated Cooperative and retired from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife, says he has an “overwhelming fascination and appreciation for the beauty, complexity, and intricacy of the natural world.”

That certainly comes across in his writing and contributes to the popularity and longevity of “Woods, Waters, and Wildlife,” but he says there’s more to it as well.

Trail cameras take both still photos and video clips of wildlife and provide endlessly entertaining images. If there’s someone on your Christmas list who would like to try this fun and fascinating outdoor hobby — or if you’d like to try it yourself — here are a few suggestions to help get you started, based on my own experience:      

Beech Creek’s multiple gardens, trails, exhibits, and events — from life-size Lincoln Logs and treehouses in the playground to a caterpillar nursery and annual butterfly parade — are enjoyed yearly by more than 40,000 visitors.

Here are a few of our favorite spaces.

“I have my oriole feeders out by the last week in April,” Mast says. “Through the years, I’ve tried a lot of different foods to attract orioles, including sliced oranges, but my main food now is simply grape jelly.” Orioles and a few other species, such as rose-breasted grosbeaks, gray catbirds, and some warblers, seem to love the stuff. “A red-bellied woodpecker even comes to my jelly feeders occasionally,” Mast says.