Storybook Hike at Hidden Pond Preserve!

Hidden Pond Preserve has two trail loops, each of which cover about half a mile. The storybook walk is set up on the flatter of the two trails – we thought it’d be kinder to little legs. The other loop takes you to the hidden pond.

The hike begins at the trailhead. You’ll probably be able to spy the first page from the parking lot. For the first part of June, you can catch some lovely blue-purple blooms on a drift of irises nearby. (Scroll to the top of this page to see them!)

The book explores the beauty and importance of our local pollinators, who will be making appearances all over the preserve this month. Many are tiny, so they’re not always easy to spot. Try standing in one place quietly for about thirty seconds. Watch the plants and grasses near your feet. I find that when I hold still, the movement of the pollinators starts to stand out to me.

Can you spot the butterfly hiding in this photo?

(Hint: she's right near the center!)

We were visited by several pollinators while installing the storybook walk. Butterflies were especially plentiful on the second half of the trail loop. We spotted a tiger swallowtail, a black swallowtail (or maybe it was a spicebush swallowtail), a monarch, and several Baltimore checkerspots:

A lot of things at Hidden Pond are just starting to bloom. We saw some spurge and some purple meadow rue that are just starting to form buds. You’ll recognize the meadow rue; one plant, which I spotted to my right not far into the hike, was nearly five feet tall! It has lacy leaves and will put out even more lacelike flowers as it grows. Several blackberry canes are finishing up their flowering as well.

I felt the need to stop and comment on, and photograph, these sassafras trees. Sassafras loves the understory, especially of pine forests. I’m so used to thinking of it as a “shade tree” that seeing it standing out here in a grassland habitat seemed odd to me. Yet it’s growing quite happily and even producing a bunch of baby trees!

The storybook hike pages are installed at about knee height for adults – or the face to face zone for kids. They’re spaced so that kids can usually spot the next one from each page, but only just. I love how the height makes them “kid-first.” As a librarian and nature lover, I wholeheartedly endorse letting any kids in your group read the book to you as you go.

The end of the book brings you back within sight of the parking lot. This is where you can decide: head around and go left toward the pond, or go somewhere else? Delton has a couple small cafes if you want snacks. Their library is small, but it’s nice. Gull Lake also has several options, including some excellent Indian food in a gas station/bait shop across from the public lake access. Gun Lake and Hastings also have both food and recreation options for the whole family.

Or, if you think of Hidden Pond as more of a warm-up, one of my all-time favorite nature spots in Barry County is Otis Lake. This is the first place I ever saw a Massasauga rattler in the wild. I’ve encountered snapping turtles here that had to be a hundred years old – just absolute boulders with tails. I once got a six-inch long leech stuck to my leg. I’ve found several species of native Michigan orchids back here.

Over the summer, Otis Lake fills in with water plants. Parts of it are nearly or completely inaccessible in late summer, even with a small canoe or a river kayak. It’s one of the wildest places within half an hour of Kalamazoo.