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Nimowin Self-guiding Trail — Spring / Summer / Fall

		Introduction Map 1) Earth is Our Home 2) Protecting the Tall Grass 3) People Use a Natural Resource 4) Pioneers 5) Take a Mosquito to Lunch 6) Humans Make Their Mark 7) Rules 8) Competition or Cooperation 9) A Bittersweet Vine 10) A Battleground 11) A Peaceful Hearth 12) A Community of Peace Conclusion Acknowledgement

Nimowin, pronounced Nim-oh-win, is a Cree word meaning peaceful or quiet. The purpose of the Nimowin Trail is to help you reflect upon the meaning of peace and how we relate to each other and our natural environment.

The desire for peace is universal-almost everyone wants to live in peace and harmony.

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What we do affects the conditions for life on Earth. For example, we breathe oxygen produced by the green plants in Birds Hill Park and exhale carbon dioxide that the green plants use for photosynthesis.

But too much carbon dioxide from our automobiles and industry may be warming Earth's climate and changing weather patterns. Finding ways to live in harmony with nature and being at peace with each other is part of the Nimowin way.

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The tall grass on the right is called big bluestem because it is blue-red or purplish in colour during the growing season. It is the grass that gave the "tall grass prairie" its name and helped to form its rich soil.

With settlement of the Red River valley, much of this plant community was agriculturally developed and now produces large quantities of food.

It is only recently that conservation efforts began to preserve the remaining tall grass prairie in Manitoba.

Farmer ploughing field

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This clearing was once a gravel pit. The forest was bulldozed so gravel beneath could be used for road building. The forest is now growing back over the gravel pit, and eventually the site will become more fully vegetated. Nature can heal small and even large wounds but if the wounds are too many or too large, nature may be unable to keep up. We must use Earth's resources sustainably, while taking care to protect and preserve nature.

Gravel pit

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Goatsbeard

The sparse growth of grasses and herbs here are pioneer plants, the first to grow after an area has been disturbed. They stabilize the soil, retain moisture, and shade seedlings of the plants that will take their place. Ecologists refer to this process as ecological succession. We call some pioneer plants that colonize our gardens, weeds.

By altering the environment now, are people behaving like pioneer plants or weeds in nature's garden? Will the environment we leave to future generations sustain our descendants, or other creatures that are better adapted to survival?

Pause here and look around; listen to the sounds; linger for a few moments. Have the mosquitoes arrived? We don't like to be bitten by mosquitoes but they are a vital link in the ecosystem. Only female mosquitoes bite. They bite because their eggs require fresh blood in order to develop. Male mosquitoes feed on nectar and pollinate flowers.

If we were to eradicate the mosquito, many species of plants might also disappear, and many animals would be deprived of a food source. In the past, when we used chemicals to control mosquitoes there were other casualties. Eagles, osprey and even people have been poisoned. To have peace, we must value all living things, even those that sometimes offend us.

Look to the left and to the right. This is not a natural clearing. Nature seldom arranges things in such straight lines.

To facilitate settlement, the land was divided into one-mile squares called sections to help define land ownership. Roads were built along section lines etching a checkerboard pattern on the countryside. This clearing is an abandoned road built on a road allowance before Birds Hill became a park.

Before the arrival of Europeans, Native people shared the land and its resources.

The park stops here but the overgrown road allowance goes on. Note the row of boulders blocking the road allowance. They were placed here to stop people who would not obey a sign saying "No Vehicles." Sit on one of the boulders and look back at the sign that says "Firearms Prohibited." These rules help preserve the peaceful nature of the park.

Rules ensure Birds Hill Park is a safe and enjoyable place for all visitors. If there were no rules in the park, some people might chop down trees or shoot animals that other people want to view or photograph.

Look carefully to the right and you will see spruce trees growing among the aspen. In 50 years, what will we find here, a thriving grove of spruce trees or a stand of ancient aspens? Environmental factors such as sun, soil and water give a competitive edge to one of them. At this point, we can't be sure which.

Competition is common place in nature. Other plants lived here before the aspen; first, pioneer plants like those we saw in the gravel pit at the beginning of the trail, then the prairie grasses moved in and now spruce may be replacing the aspen. A natural or human-made event, such as fire, could wipe the slate clean again and the cycle would repeat itself.

Some people say that such cycles are the natural order of things and that the human species may someday disappear. But unlike plants and other animals, humans can choose to cooperate and coexist.

Bittersweet vine

The vine growing tightly around the trunk of this balsam poplar is bittersweet. The bittersweet vine is actually embedded in the bark in some places and may eventually cut through the bark and kill the supporting tree. Bittersweet gains access to sunlight by climbing up erect plants. Their orange berries-illustrated on the brochure cover and on the trailhead sign-are poisonous.

Watch for a black clump growing on the stems of trees and bushes along this part of the trail. It is black knot fungus, commonly called dead man's finger, and also may kill the plant that supports it.

Like the bittersweet vine and the black knot fungus, we could destroy the environment that supports us. Unlike them, however, we can choose to protect our natural environment.

A farm family lost its battle with nature here because they chose the wrong battleground. The soil is too sandy and infertile for farming.

The ditch you crossed a few metres back may have been dug to drain the marshy area to the left, beyond the trees, and used for pasture. With the drainage system untended, the pasture has reverted to marsh. To the right are pits from which gravel was taken for use around the farm.

Why did the farm family choose this site with its sandy and infertile soil? Was it because the landscape here was like the landscape they were used to and the familiar surroundings made them feel at peace? Or were they pioneers who couldn't find peace close to other people?

Homestead

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Bouquet of lilacs

Look for signs of human habitation: to the left, a clump of iris that once graced a front stoop; beyond, nearly submerged in a tide of grass, stones from a hearth where a farm family found warmth and peace during the long, frigid months of the Manitoba winter; to the right a lilac bush, planted long ago and nurtured with loving care. Not well adapted to this place, the lilac bush is slowly being overwhelmed by the better-adapted native grass and aspen.

Perhaps the scent of lilacs and the bloom of iris meant peace to a farm family.

Take a few minutes to experience the peacefulness of this place.

The plants here live in a cooperative relationship. The tops of the aspen trees form a canopy regulating the amount of light reaching the plants below and the aspen leaves which drop each fall, condition the soil for them to grow in. Beneath the aspen grow the tall woody shrubs-hazel, red osier dogwood, arrowwood, chokecherry, pincherry, nannyberry and high bush-cranberry; and beneath them, grows a thin cover of grasses, herbs, and small shrubs such as baneberry, bedstraw, bunchberry and poison ivy. These plants, unlike the mixed aspen and spruce that you saw earlier, are coexisting as a stable community. Barring some catastrophe, this community will remain as it is for a long period of time.

Baneberry. Both white and red varieties are poisonous

Poison Ivy

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While exploring the Nimowin Trail, you have also been exploring the many meanings of peace. At times, peace is something to seek; familiar surroundings, long winter evenings in front of a warm hearth or living in harmony with a healthy environment. At other times, peace is the absence of something; danger or unpleasantness such as mosquitoes, too many people, or an unhealthy environment.

Nature can heal wounds resulting from human exploitation if people are careful and assist in the healing process. Careless use of Earth's resources and pollution may leave wounds that nature cannot heal.

When we used pesticides that we didn't understand very well, such as DDT, to eliminate creatures that offended us, the pesticides turned up in our own bodies. This experience taught us about the interconnectedness of nature. If we are to have real peace, we must learn to live in harmony with all the other living things on this planet, not just those we like.

We are stewards of the environment. We have a moral obligation to future generations to leave an environment that will sustain them at least as well as it has sustained us. We can, and are, taking better care of the planet and are striving to resolve our differences by cooperation and negotiation. There are a lot of steps yet to be taken but perhaps your walk on the Nimowin Trail has been one small step.

The Nimowin Trail and this brochure are products of a cooperative activity between a government agency, the Manitoba Parks Branch and a nongovernmental organization, the Manitoba Educators for Social Responsibility.

You may keep this brochure for reference or as a souvenir if you wish. If you do not wish to keep it, please drop it in the box at the end of the trail for someone else to use.