Experiencing nature at Succop
PENN TWP — Every Thursday morning for years, Ryan Stauffer has given a tour of Succop Nature Park. The park comprises 50 acres of woodlands, gardens and lush meadows, traversable by way of about 2 miles of trails that wind their way through several unique biomes.
Even though his tour inevitably repeats routes, some people have attended it every week and learn something new, because as Stauffer explained, nature is ever-changing and so are the observations he can make about it.
“I don’t do any preparation, nature does that for me,” said Stauffer, environmental educator with the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania. “Every week, there’s all new things to see. The plants are in a different stage of development, so I just kind of go out and see what’s out there. If I find something that’s interesting, I’ll point it out to people.”
While some walking tours would be dampened by overcast weather following a stormy night before, Stauffer’s tour on Thursday, June 19, went on as usual, with a handful of guests trudging through some residual mud to follow Stauffer through the trails.
The reward for this wet hike was not only hearing Stauffer’s observations about plants’ developments after frequent rain, but the sighting of a great blue heron as it crept up to one of the park’s ponds to find an ideal fishing spot. That’s why Stauffer doesn’t plan out his tours — the nature of nature is unpredictable.
“What it wants to do is to scout out a fishing site over clear water, and at this time of day, it’s going to be on this side of the pond because the sun’s over here,” Stauffer said of the heron. “So the fish aren’t going to see him as well, he sits there still and waits, and then ‘Pow.’”
Succop Nature Park is one of four campuses of the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania, the other three being Buffalo Creek Nature Park in Buffalo Township; Todd Nature Reserve in Buffalo Township; and Beechwood Farms Nature Reserve in Pittsburgh.
Stauffer said the Audubon Society’s programs are created by the staff of each park, who each specialize in different areas of nature. According to Stauffer, the Audubon Society hosts programs that play to the strength of its staff members.
“We try to put together programs based on what we’re pumped about” he said. “We’re not told, ‘You have to teach this class then.’ It’s, ‘Hey, what does this quarter look like for you, what programs do you want to do?’”
Succop Nature Park is built atop old farmland, and a barn originally built in 1883 still stands on the property. Because of the park’s long history, it not only has a lot of old trees, its ecosystem is diverse as well — a fact he emphasized on June 19.
Stauffer said Succop Nature Park alone has almost 100 species of trees in its 50 acres.
“Just today we walked through a meadow, a successional field habitat, a coniferous forest a deciduous forest, open lawn of specimen trees, cattail marsh, pond ecosystem,” Stauffer said. “We walked through seven distinct biomes in an hour, and each one of those is supporting its own menagerie of wildlife based on the plant complexes that are present in each one.”
The tours are free to attend, like many of the programs hosted by the Audubon Society, but it is also free to roam around the property without any guide, seven days a week almost every day of the year.
“We are open dawn to dusk to the public,” Stauffer said. “If there is a wedding going on, you’re still welcome to come here. If there is some event or a class, the public is always welcome, and so we want to make sure that that’s very clear.”
Doug Pollock, of Forward Township, said the tour of Succop on June 19 came almost a full year after he took his first tour with Stauffer. A recent retiree, Pollock said he began taking the tours of Succop every week to gain new appreciation for nature, which he has turned into a bit of a postretirement hobby.
Even though he has taken the tour almost every week for a year, Pollock emphasized that he learned something new thanks to the different observations Stauffer makes.
“It’s different every time,” Pollock said. “I like to understand how everything in nature works.”
The tour Thursday was the first for a different recent retiree, Mike Corcoran, of Adams Township, who also said he wants to gain appreciation for nature in his postwork life.
“I learned a lot,” Corcoran said. “He just sees things differently. He looks at something and can tell you something interesting about it.”
Two children also accompanied Stauffer on the tour — an opportunity he used to hone in on some of their particular interests. For instance, a pair of robins appeared to have been fighting one another in a meadow, which Stauffer encouraged the youths to watch to make their own observations about nature. Pollock said Stauffer’s explanations are an asset that comes from touring the park with him.
“There’s so much knowledge in there,” Pollock said. “I enjoy watching him explain things to people and getting them thinking about it.”
While the explanations are a benefit of going through the park with a naturalist, Stauffer said he hopes people have other takeaways from his tours. It’s not important to him that people retain every bit of information he provides on the tours, or even specific facts about a particular plant or bird species — it’s more important that people realize that nature is all around them.
As Stauffer explained, he tries to speak on tours when something strikes him. He even leads “silent tours,” when he takes a group — usually students — through the park and asking them not to speak, but to use their other senses to take in nature. He also said you don’t need any equipment or even a handbook to be a “birder,” you just have to watch and learn.
“I try not to just jabber to fill space. If I say something I’m trying to point something out to someone,” Stauffer said. “There’s a lot of birding you can do just by sound and behavior and what site you’re in.
“My biggest thing is putting forward our mission to connect people to birds and nature through our people, programs and places.”
For more information about Succop Nature Park and its programming, visit its website at aswp.org.
