Outdoors Maryland; 1406

This program has been made possible by the members of NPT. Thank you for your generous support. Coming up with paint and palette capturing shades of a frosty Maryland winter. Scouring a rugged barrier island beach for a surprise discovery. And baptism in the ways of the bay next. Outdoors Maryland is produced in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. DENR. Inspired by Nature. It's just so staggeringly beautiful.

Somehow it seems like the painting is just a byproduct of the experience of engaging in nature. And also on how well look here's a painting how I have a record of having had that experience. It's just amazing because it puts you into such a close relationship of nature just the process of analyzing and color you're studying it and looking and seeing and trying to get closer to that color that you see. That's that's your connection with nature that's the artist connection with nature. Whenever and wherever his paintbrush meets campus artist John Edwards burghers subject. Is always the light. In landscapes.

Portraits. Still Life. Based in Annapolis Maryland. John lives the Impressionist creed of finding beauty. Here. And now. I'm an impressionist in the way that Claude Monet was an impressionist and what he did was he studied. Color and sunlight and the use of color to depict the different qualities of light that are seen in nature. The sunlight is beautiful. Anywhere you see it you don't have to travel all across the ocean France to see the beauty of nature. It's a beautiful thing to walk out your front door and painting your own yard. My teacher used to say that everything under the sun is beautiful if you have the vision it's the seeing of

the thing that makes it so. Every winter for nearly 15 years John and the changing circle of fellow artists have come to Deep Creek Lake in the snowy mountains of western Maryland to play. Bass in fact and this is not. 15 years of painting here and love. And dating. Up in here you got more light you know dynamically hitting the tree this winter's expedition organizer Johnny burger. Nice blue foreground white blouse. Yeah.

Sharon letting. Abigail McBride. So Ray McHugh. And. John Todd. Today is gloriously sunny an embarrassment of riches. This is really dynamic looking through here. The light blasting away on the ground there here. I'm always looking for someone some drama in it. The street was pretty cool the other day and it's kind of first in the river now. This is nice I might do this. This is a great spot it's beautiful.

I do the only trouble is the light hitting the tree trunks might last three minutes. It might last 15 minutes you know. So you just really got to jump in and go for it with all you've got and leave my pallet. In the snow at night so the paint dry. But then you always end up a little you usually have to thaw it out a bit. Now a lot of times I'll start out sketching this thing in. If I knew I was coming out here and was going to have the opportunity to develop this more slowly which would be very nice. I would bring a great deal more care to how I lay it out. But in each situation you capture something unique. During these winter painting excursions leading sun and changing weather mean paintings are completed in hours instead of the usual days or weeks.

Chasing the sun. The artists paint several canvases a day scattered across the snowy landscape at a companionable distance. Sharon is knee deep into her snow scape. I've been coming up here for the last seven years and I like the challenge of dealing with the elements but the drama of it all have the wind blowing the snow getting on your pallet. And then come up with a picture that really shows all that. You've been through. It's more than just. Just a picture of what was there. It's more of an experience. To the Impressionists the sky is not just blue. The snow never stark white. As Johnny Evers verger student Serene has learned the art of seeing a painting causes one to observe more deeply and to see colors and light and shade patterns that if one was simply passing by one might not take notice of a.

Painting student John Todd finds nature an inexhaustible source of inspiration. If you're trying to create a feeling of white. With. Colored toothpaste so you know it's it's a very challenging problem in the store and. When you're happy with your work your sock has long as you're not happy you keep trying to get better and I'm never completely happy. Sometimes the painters return again and again to a scene at a certain hour of the day to catch the line. Abigail is painting the sunset on the frozen lake again. Well. I painted the scene I think seven times since I got here. And. So beautiful that. You're sitting there and you almost have. This intense. But wonderful experience and I think that's what beautiful I mean where you go wow I've seen a fund that just like that new

amazing. The next day brings light snow fall. John seizes the chance to finish a painting he'd started in falling snow days ago. For John capturing a natural scene by a photograph or painting later would never do. You have to be standing out there in the presence of nature to really get it you have to have the total experience. There's no way that you can capture these colors on film. The hard part of the paint in the snow is really ascertaining the color of the snow because it's it's so iridescent it's picking up. The colors of everything around it and really snow you ever cast days everything's so muted. And seemingly Gray. But then when you get into exploring the color. It's just amazing all the variety of color that's actually there.

Sometimes when the when the snow falls on the palette you get these ice crystals built up in it and it doesn't mix with water so it kind of gets dragged you laded you see it in the in the surface of the paint here gets of scribbly and adds to the whole evocative quality of the painting. It's kind of neat when you take it inside you bring an element of the outside inside. A painting to made to be successful would be to communicate the beauty that I see in nature. It's a totally humbling experience you feel like you're never going to get there because the more you see the more you realize how far you have to go to to really approach the majesty of what's out there in nature I mean nature is the guiding light. It's just just so staggeringly beautiful and if you can share a little bit of that with somebody else that's what I would call a successful painter. To the untrained eye it is ordinarily wild and you get.

A projection. Of power. And simplicity. At the water's edge. But to those who understand as you take islands deep and rich complexities the natural order here is out of kilter. It's delicate interdependent collection of plants and animals endangered by a manmade blunder. The problem beach sand. Not the presence of it but the shape of it and tons of it pushed and molded 40 years ago by man and machine in the towering artificial dunes. Ecologists eager to protect the island from ferocious Atlantic storms piled the sand high as natural sea walls. The Dunes block the ocean's natural. Cleansing. The island depended on for centuries instead of protecting the island acetate itself was in danger.

The massive dunes are nearly gone. Abandoned to the wind and water. But the island paid a heavy price and irony not lost on Wayne Tindall. He's a restoration ecologist for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources at the time. Back in the late 60s and early 70s. It seemed like a good idea to try to help stabilize the island by building a forward base a 20 foot high Dune 60 or 80 feet wide and that would help harness some. That energy coming in from the ocean. But after about five or six years or so it became pretty evident that that was a mistake. A big mistake one that cost the island a key part of its unique survival system. Plant species that over time have adapted to the rugged conditions of the seashore. The wind water intense heat so often blowing sand. Gone were several plants the island needs exiled by the men may do.

It's. Shannon Ramsey discovered something that's changed all that. It's nice to be able to come to an Island a barrier island that's undeveloped. You can walk into a primitive area where there is no parking lots there's no cars driving and you can appreciate. A real sea shore. Ramsey is a National Park Service ranger and spends her days scouting Assoc. to garland on the normal course a day for my job. I would be monitoring piping plovers all summer and a vast. Island habitat in that several miles of beach we walk all summer long we watch our feet. We're looking specifically for the piping clover which is a shore bird that nest on the ground and it is listed as federally threatened. So we monitor it very closely and trying to figure out it's breeding success. So on a routine monitoring day. In August we come up. Start our our regular day

and we're walking along looking mostly at our feet always at the ground. Looking for. Tracks. Eggs. Watching for birds. And as I'm doing that very slowly always very carefully there in front of me was planned. The planned sea beach Amaranth. A startling discovery a species extinct on the island for 30 years and one whose job is critical to the island's very survival found sprouted on a sand flat on the island's north then. Just a stone's throw across the inlet from Ocean City. Three major plant species on acetate Amaranth the Sea Rocket and salt meadow cord grass. All Dune builders and stabilizers keep the island's elevation above sea level. Without them acids would wash away. Amaranth alone is critical to doing reconstruction after major storms flood and flatten the island.

It's the first plant to reappear on the beach earning it the title of pioneer species. Ecologist had given up on finding the sea beach Amaranth on acetate Ramsey's discovery that the plant recolonize the island was big news. One that's fueled hope the island's ecology will stage a comeback and sparked an effort to help the species do what it does best. Re-establish acetates natural dune system where somebody's trying to benefit some ecological factors that we have contributed to being out of balance. Once we understand which ones are out of balance trying to get them back in balance and then letting you know natural processes take over. With some help from volunteers the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the National Park Service. For the next two or three years the planting should be looked at as an experiment. Where if we've

selected areas that we think are. Pretty close to natural conditions but we aren't sure. So we're going in with these experimental plantings and we see they're in a particular design is a particular experimental design and people will be out monitoring during the whole summer just to see how the transplants do. But we are we aren't sure. So we're looking for areas that we think. May be close enough to natural conditions to boost the repopulation of CD jam. We're just trying to give a sort of a jumpstart because we may not we may not get the chance again again 31 years went by. As a plant grows as the wind starts blowing against and blowing sand against it it will start trapping sand and building small dunes. Chris Lao is an ecologist for the National Park Service on acetate dunes get. Larger and larger and build the elevation up kind of gradually. Now the Amaranth is

probably among the plants I can grow closest to the salt water and it actually increases the elevations slightly more and then other plants can get established. So it's part of the natural dynamics of of doing formation occurring here on the island. The lesson of the sea beach Amaranth on acetate it's lost to mankind's management of the island and its surprise rediscovering. Highlights how little we still know about some ecosystems and why preservation of some plant species is so important. I think human beings are learning more and more that they are most compatible. They are happiest with natural systems that they let function in their natural process. It was so much easier to just fit in with her sister anything there was to fight assist or try to modify a system and then only find out that you have to go back and you have the Kurds back in the rivers because they occurred for a very very good

reasons. You have to go back and remove a forwarding system because you have some in combat incompatible impacts and also affected. The use of the island by people so I think I think gradually as measured in the last two decades people have a better sense of how they fit in with the natural world and it's actually more enjoyable to fit in with the natural world rather than trying to force fit it into a situation that they may perceive. Right in this corner and aren't hammering. The island gets. They call it baptism in the bay.

I think. A change of heart and mind that comes only with immersion. These Maryland eighth graders are among more than a thousand students who every year get down and dirty helping the Chesapeake Bay. They grasses and classes is a joint venture of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to help restore native grasses to the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. The process begins as students across the state grow big grasses from seed in their classrooms. The weeks long experiment is integrated into the curriculum. We take the data that are generated by the schools and we use those data in future years to produce more grasses more quickly and more classrooms. Michael Naylor is natural resources biologist with the DNR aquatic vegetation communities in Maryland are a fraction of

what they were historically and we are able to target areas by looking at water quality that are in need of restoration and by having the kids raise the grasses were able to grow a really large number of grasses. We started the grasses in classes back in 1998 with just seven schools involved. And in just four years we've gone to 200 schools in Maryland and there are also schools in four other states that have put up this program so this has quickly become something very large a multi-state that could make a really big difference throughout the United States. Our school is a. Temperature experiment. Your science teacher Daphne McKay inaugurated the program for her eighth graders at King's view Middle School in Germantown Maryland. Her students grew wild celery grass in two separate tanks with water temperature differences of 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Every week. We're taking you know. Yes the wider polity and we were looking at how the temperature would affect the present but. Tomorrow is the big day. After 13 weeks the students will plant their

grasses and waters targeted for restoration near their school. The lake at Piney run park in Carroll County lies not on the bay but in its vast watershed. The students are learning water quality in their neighborhood directly affects water quality in the bay. What. I don't. Get right on the ground. This is one of the most exciting moments of the semester for them because it's kind of a culmination of all their efforts. Get your. Life into your own grasses that implants in the Chesapeake Bay Foundation provides beyond side expertise. The month of May funds field manager Jessica Lewis and Abigail Harding supervising a school plan to use almost daily throughout the state. John Roden

housing is Maryland education restoration coordinator for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. When kids think about this project we hope that it's left an indelible impression on them and a lot of times it has first time some kids even knew that there were grasses in the water. And. The grasses are not only a great food source and protection there. They're a very important part of the water chemistry. They're an important part of the habitat. Things hide in and things have They're young they're so grasses are really a huge huge part of the whole balance. That's right. God not only are we able to make a difference but people really care teachers and students really care about this project and it's really made a big effect I think on a lot of people. We can tell by your graphic that you all did an awesome job. So get yourself really. Once the grasses are planted the students get a chance to see firsthand the range of

creatures their grasses will help. For many it's the first time the word habitat is hands on acquainted with home. OK look I know and I see no one. Told. The British It's a crater that's a little afraid that you're very kind of old that. They get you into the gravy already dried coverage for years. Yeah as if you're holding up a car crash here right. Yeah yeah like I really like the fish I like different parts of speech. You know it's just good to be able to like have the experience holding the fish so you have no goodnight sentiment. Jenna waded into new waters with the fun while learning experience instead of like sitting

around reading books and writing. We actually got a hands on project which makes us care more about it because we did something good that was fun and we enjoyed doing it. Joelle is proud to be part of a much larger effort would like to own one of the only middle schools that are doing this project. It made me feel good because there's high school seems to miss Simon. I can't begin to tell you how happy it makes me to see my students getting involved with a project. Like that big rass and the puzzle that there's one thing that I would like my students to take away as I tackle. It's that they can have an impact. On their. Mind. What they will the actions that they take now. Can have an impact on the future of our bed. And. Even their children's future. My folate have riposte bread look good feel. Good. Drop into our website at w w w dot MP T Dot. O RG

Just send us your comments and suggestions. This program has been made possible by the members of NPT. Thank you for your generous support.