TIPTON — On a cool April morning, friends and neighbors gathered around a fire in Tipton. A young boy found an earthworm and carried it around in his small hand, showing it to everyone. We were here to walk on Bob Kellum’s land in the first of a series of free tours offered by the Grand Raisin Conservation Community, one of many member communities of The Stewardship Network.

The “Sense of Place Home Walk Series” takes place on public and private lands and allows tour guides to share their connections to the places they love.

What makes this place unique?

“It’s rare to have intact ecosystems,” a nearby neighbor named Andy Lewis shared. He mentioned the distinct rolling topography and the many habitats, from wetlands to oak savannah, that thrive within the land’s dips and ridges. He spoke of the long presence of human habitation in the area, going as far back as the last ice age when people hunted megafauna here. He mentioned how, in more recent times, the area served as an important stopover on the Underground Railroad.

Kellum noted that the area had the special distinction of being the headwaters of two separate watersheds that flow into the Raisin and Grand Rivers, with one draining to Lake Erie and the other to Lake Michigan. Someone else pointed out that the area’s natural boundaries, shaped by watersheds and topography, are clear. In contrast, the ones overlain by humans, encompassing several counties and jurisdictions, are disjointed. That lack of a single political or jurisdictional identity makes the natural boundaries all the more definitive in creating a shared sense of place.

“Everywhere, everything has something to express,” Kellum told the group, reminding us that the land has many ways of speaking, if we only take the time to listen. Surrounding us were 300 acres of family land that he has been listening to for decades. Over the years, he has taken up the mantle of stewardship in collaboration with many helping hands. Some of the tour’s attendants have joined him in caring for the land: together, they monitor plants and wildlife, collect and disperse seeds from healthy remnant ecosystems, administer seasonal burns, and remove invasive species.

As we walked, I noticed the thickets of honeysuckle and autumn olive occupying large sections of the understory. Even though they have no legs, plants are always on the move. Their seeds are carried in the bellies of animals and get deposited in clumps of self-starter around the landscape. They are stowed in the pockets of people who travel around the world with their ancestral medicines. Governments promote them to help stabilize soil or provide forage. And so, along with those plants that have co-evolved with local wildlife over eons, many newcomers are on the scene.

“We often find that if we just remove some of the stuff that Europeans put in, these areas can restore themselves,” Jeremy Siegrist, one of the land stewards, told us. He mentioned that in mainstream culture, there is a heavy emphasis on adding things to our places, like new landscaping, structures, and roads. But often, the land actually calls for the removal of particular species and tending to what is already there.

Our path continued through forested areas. We meandered by a hillside seep erupting in skunk cabbage, a stream blooming yellow with marsh marigolds, the border of a wetland, and a stand of mayapples. The day warmed up. When we passed by a spring, several people paused to dip out a drink with a metal cup. As they bent low and sipped, someone noticed a cluster of bright orange growth in the divot of a mossy log. Wolf slime mold, we learned. People spoke, but not too much. Instead, we listened to the land yammer: A Swamp sparrow trilled along the edge of a pond. Warblers, freshly returned from their spring migration, sung from the canopy. Distantly, I could hear a tree frog croaking, and the powerful bellows of Sandhill cranes.

We came upon a grove of white oak trees. In the center, one tree stood much larger than the surrounding ones. “That one is the mother tree,” Kellum said, gesturing. “All this younger growth came from that tree.”

Where before I had barely noticed the trees, the grove now seemed illuminated by this regenerative dynamic. What we were gazing upon was a tree nursery. “White oak spreads wealth to everyone … insects, birds … white oak can anchor the whole area.”

As he spoke, I thought of the role that this group of people held. I witnessed how they were dedicating their lives as stewards, casting seeds, operating from a shared vision marked by respect and care, and paying close attention to the many messages coming from the land.

“It’s important to build an awareness about the things that we don’t have an ear for and the things that we can’t see — just because we can’t see them doesn’t make them any less important,” Kellum said.

An invitation to others

The efforts underway on Kellum’s land provide an example of what can happen at a large scale, but connections with the land can happen anywhere, at any scale. A nearby neighbor named Sylvia Kay shared that hers comes from feeling a “kinship with the trees.” Andy Lewis spoke about the value of creating essential islands in a sea of fragmented habitats: “Your own yard can become a diversified wild habitat … Backyard ecosystems are the stepping stones that a lot of species need to move around.” Others mentioned the potential for residents to pull non-native species and learn where the waters in their communities flow.

“My hope is for people to build a connection to the land, one that is integrated and not extractive — a living relationship with the land they live on,” Siegrist concluded.

Upcoming tours in the Sense of Place series include:

• MacCready Nature Reserve, 9243 Skiff Lake Road, Clarklake, on Saturday, May 10 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
• Leaf and Feather Farms, 13980 Calhoun Road, Cement City, on Saturday, June 28, from 9 a.m. to noon.
• Goose Creek Grasslands Nature Sanctuary, off Cement City Highway near Cement City, on Saturday, Aug. 16, from 2-5 p.m.

Events are free and all are welcome. To lead your own tour, email Carely Kratz at [email protected].