Developing a Sense of Place in Non-Traditional Spaces

by Robert D. Hinkle

In today’s atmosphere of broken connections with nature, it has become critical for park districts to create those connections for visitors they serve. Linkages can be physical, such as trails connecting neighborhoods with parks, they can be intellectual, connecting visitors with park districts’ missions and the information deemed important to learn, and they can be emotional, the kind of connections that build constituencies. All three are essential to ensuring the success of parks and the heritage interpretation that makes those linkages work.

Photo by Casey Batule

In a focus group study conducted by Cleveland Metroparks NatureTracks Outreach staff, a group of non-park users answered a simple but important question: “Why don’t you use the parks?” Their answer was simple and pointed: “Because we don’t know what to do when we get there.” It is the role of interpretation to make the emotional and intellectual connections between the interests of the visitors and the meanings inherent in the resource.

We have long recognized that good interpretation engages all the senses. I would suggest that our list of senses needs to be expanded. Today’s audience for interpretive experiences comes to us seeking three more senses—a sense of security, a sense of belonging, and a sense of place. These new sensory components of interpretive programming, if properly developed, create new attachments between the visitor and the resource, and build linkages from the heart and mind directly to the conservation, education, and outdoor recreation needs of the surrounding communities.

Cleveland Metroparks is a large regional park agency founded in 1917, currently holding more than 21,000 acres of parkland, over 80 percent of which persists in an undeveloped state. It is not a part of the city of Cleveland; rather, it is a separate political subdivision of the state of Ohio, much like a town or village. It encircles Cuyahoga County in a series of parkways and reservations called “The Emerald Necklace.” Its over 100 miles of parkways traverse more than 50 municipalities, each a partner in upholding the mission of Cleveland Metroparks.

Five of Cleveland Metroparks’s six nature and visitor centers are destination-driven—visitors must drive or walk long distances or negotiate circuitous routes of public transportation to arrive there. Over 80 miles of paved “All Purpose Trail” (APT) largely follow parkways through the reservations and sometimes make connections between reservations. Until the Lake to Lake Trail (L2L) was conceived, no APT trail system within Cleveland Metroparks ventured away from parkways. L2L embodies a new direction in visitor experience and interpretation.

Cuyahoga County is largely “built-out,” with little land still available in natural areas other than existing parklands. Lake Isaac, a well-known regional waterfowl sanctuary, sits in the town of Middleburg Heights, about 13 miles southwest of downtown Cleveland. It is one of only two glacial pothole lakes still remaining in the county, and lies in Big Creek Reservation. Through a series of land donations by nearby Baldwin-Wallace College, the other remaining glacial lake, Lake Abram, became available to Cleveland Metroparks in 1994. Park planners and heritage interpreters conceived a potential trail linkage between the two lakes, but no land was then available for purchase. It took almost 10 years to create a series of partnerships between Cleveland Metroparks and agencies and individuals within and adjoining the proposed trail corridor to create the landmass necessary for L2L.

The “Prehistoric Play Pit,” designed by Cleveland Metroparks’s visual communications division, stands where these extinct animals once roamed. Photo by Casey Batule.

The Lake to Lake Trail makes connections not just through but into the heart of hidden histories and natural places that before the trail’s realization were simply academic fact. Along the L2L corridor lies the largest remaining wetland in the county, formerly hidden to any but adjacent landowners. Just north of the wetland the trail passes within 200 feet of one of the largest regional hospitals in the county, then travels farther north past an extended care facility that was formerly landlocked by roads and inaccessible woodlots. The trail continues winding from the care facility into a second-growth woodlot and on to the shore of the second-largest cattail marsh remaining in the county, on the southern end of Lake Abram. There, an 840-foot boardwalk crosses the marsh and takes visitors west to a second trailhead and parking area, where their journey ends or they turn and retrace their steps southward.

The trail was designed to be more than just a place for wellness walking, however. In keeping with Cleveland Metroparks’s mission of “conservation, education, and recreation,” a series of trail additions and interpretive components was planned to create the senses of security, belonging, and place that visitors seek. Naturalist and Certified Interpretive Planner Debra Shankland acted as interpretive project manager throughout the 18-month development of the trail. Using the 5M model outlined in the book Interpretive Planning by Lisa Brochu, Debra carefully researched potential user groups and their needs, demographics within walking distance of the area, and the cultural and natural histories of the lands through which L2L meanders. Developed as a 2.4-mile walk through time, the interpretive components serve to connect users with a fascinating human history that few would otherwise know, and further develop their sense of belonging to the place where they live. Additionally, the natural history of the lands traversed by their walk was also developed as a story in time, with a few “wow” surprises added for good measure.

Spotting scopes and flipbooks add distance viewing and easy identification to the observation deck. Photo by Sharon Hosko.

The trail begins to the south at Lake Isaac, where waterfowl interpretation answers the questions, “What’s that duck?” and “Where did it come from?” The migration story explains how black ducks nesting from Quebec to Manitoba appear at this one small lake within four days at the same time every year. A short walk northward takes visitors through a new tunnel under an active railroad track, where they discover that both they and the feeder stream for the watershed to the north now weave through the same small passage.

Another few hundred feet takes them past Polaris Career Center to an elevated boardwalk on the shore of Fowles Marsh, the last remaining large cattail marsh in the county. A covered shelter holds two spotting scopes and laser-cut silhouettes of six of the common species of waterfowl likely to be seen there. Additionally, sturdy flipbooks identify and interpret the most common birds, amphibians, reptiles, and marsh plants likely to be visible from the deck.

Walk the trail at noon, and from this spot north many of the hikers will be wearing colorful surgical scrubs, as the trail passes alongside Southwest General Health Center. Wellness walking coupled with fun learning and a safe, peaceful place to commune with nature are provided by the trail. Another quarter mile and the trail crosses a major five-lane road, where visitors learn that the place where they stand was itself a cattail marsh not long ago, and the land was drained to become one of the world’s largest centers of commercial onion farming. Geography is destiny, and the marsh that made the soil brought their ancestors to farm it.

Another quarter mile takes the trail past a well-groomed and well-interpreted cemetery, the final resting place of the first landowners of this area. The dates show the centuries that have passed since they first set foot here, and the interpretive panels tell the story of the land as settlement gave way to suburbs.

Crossing a modest access road takes hikers to an open meadow. A connector from the extended care facility just 75 feet off the trail brings wheelchair-bound residents out into nature and reminds them of their youth, when they played in the fields and forests of this community. Interpretive panels along the way, placed at an easily accessible height, continue the interpretive journey into the forest and back in time when the First People lived here. The forest and marsh and lake beyond provided for them, just as the drained marsh areas provided for the settlers and the agriculture that followed.

Traveling through the forest takes visitors to the edge of an 840-foot boardwalk that crosses over the south edge of Lake Abram and its cattail wetland complex. Traveling the boardwalk, visitors find themselves surrounded by cattails nearly as tall as they, until they reach the elevated platform in the center, which raises them over 10 feet, commanding a panoramic view of the marsh and the open water of the lake beyond. Plans for the platform were vetted with two local birding groups, both now enthusiastic partners. The platform holds yet another viewing scope and benches facing outward, enabling visitors to sit and observe the wetlands surrounding them. Overhead, another set of laser-cut icons accurately portrays several of the common dragonflies of the marsh below. Flipbooks at two locations there offer not just identification, but also a brief natural history of each common plant or creature likely to be seen.

The final hundred feet of the boardwalk spill out on solid ground again, at a place with more surprises. Post-Ice Age mammals once roamed this very place, and mastodon remains are not an infrequent find in similar pothole lakes and bogs in northeastern Ohio. Here, the “Prehistoric Play Pit” holds a life-sized replica of a mastodon skeleton emerging from the ground for children (and adults, we’ve found) to play on. The size of the creature is inspiring enough, but nearby interpretive panels elaborate on the life and times of these creatures, which once could be found here on this very spot. Only 50 feet away, a dragonfly dipping pond and circling boardwalk offer opportunities to explore, play, or “just mess around” with the water. A short walk west takes visitors to a picnic rest area and ultimately to a parking lot and trailhead kiosk, at the trail’s northern terminus.

In addition to the kinesthetic, verbal, and visual components of the interpretive process, a podcast offers a downloadable trail overview. Other vod- and podcasts to enhance trail exploration through each season are under development.

Local studies show us that visitors seek more recreational components as part of their interpretive experience. While each of the six centers of Cleveland Metroparks has already shifted some types of programming to meet that need, L2L is the first Cleveland Metroparks APT trail that achieves the goal of connecting communities off parkway roads through a self-paced recreational experience that connects a sense of self to a sense of place through direct, community-driven interpretive elements.

Robert D. Hinkle, Ph.D., CIP, CIT, is the chief of Cleveland Metroparks’s division of outdoor education. Reach him at rdh@clevelandmetroparks.com.