A wildflower walk with naturalist, writer and environmental educator Rich Parisio will be featured in the next Wild Saturday program Saturday, July 6 at 1 p.m. at John Burroughs’ Woodchuck Lodge, 1633 Burroughs Memorial Road, Roxbury. “The Flowering Meadows of Summer” is a free program and all are welcome. Richard Parisio has worked as a naturalist and educator for over forty years in the Everglades, Poconos and Catskill Mountains, and in the Hudson Valley. He leads field trips for school classes at Mohonk Preserve near his home in New Paltz, and writes a weekly nature column for the New Paltz Times. Parisio, a Burroughs scholar, is NYS Coordinator for River of Words, a national children’s poetry contest on the theme of watersheds. This pleasant walk will begin on the steps of Woodchuck Lodge where John Burroughs himself began many a ramble through field and forest. Parisio will lead participants to John Burroughs Memorial Field just up the road in search of native and imported wildflowers, with readings from Burroughs' essays. Participants will learn about simple ways to identify wildflowers, and the edible, medicinal, and other uses of these plants among native people and early European settlers in the region. “Wild Saturdays” is a series of free nature programs held on the first Saturday of the month through October at Woodchuck Lodge, the rustic farmhouse where literary naturalist John Burroughs spent summers from 1910 to 1920. Visitors are welcome to come early or linger after the program to tour the rustic farmhouse where Burroughs spent summers from 1910 to 1920. The Lodge is open for free tours from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays on the first weekend of every month. Reservations are not needed. A picnic table is available for open air lunch!
