Frog Walk-Miami County

It’s April. Time for a frog walk.

 If you’re not sure about what that is, here’s a clue. Medway has a corner where the nightly din of hundreds of frogs and peepers can be heard as one sits at the traffic light at Lower Valley Pike and Gerlaugh Road.

 A frog walk is much more than sounds carried on nightly air though. Our neighbor, Miami County Park District holds its annual Frog Walk on April 15 at Garbry Big Woods Sanctuary, south of Fletcher. At 8:30 pm, registered participants will join a park district naturalist and head into an evening full of croaks, ribbets, cheeps, peeps and otherwise froggy sounds. As sundown slowly seeps into the woods, flashlights will pick up tiny eyes and a few splashes as amphibious residents take note of their human visitors.

 For details and registration go to the website for Miami County Parks and look under programs/events. A calendar will come up. Find the Frog Walk, click on and register. Take note of instructions for time, parking, appropriate shoes and flashlight. To speak with a person, call the Admin/Office at 937-335-6273.

 If you’re not a night person, by all means visit the sanctuary during the day when you can see and hear all the earth has to offer in a place where birds and wildlife are abundant. Staying on the boardwalk is a must. Go slow. Breathe in a different kind of air. Listen to a different kind of voice. Take your time, benches are there for a reason.

 The first time my mother and I visited the sanctuary, Ohio’s official wildflowers, the great white trillium, were at their best. Mom had an affinity for wildflowers and wrote below her photograph of them, “White trillium in abundance, in all my life, have not seen such profusion.”

 That was back in 1999. Seventeen years later the wildflowers are still amazing and are the earth’s reminders of Mom and her love of all living things. When Doug and I visited the sanctuary this past week, life was in high gear. As chickadees, nuthatches, song sparrows, and all sorts of woodpeckers moved about, overhead a pair of red tail hawks drifted in circles on swirling, warm, soft air currents. From all directions came the croaks of frogs.

 Besides trillium, spring beauties dotted the forest floor. Green leaves were beginning to open on hawthorn, American elm and hornbeam trees. Green, green moss grew up between the boardwalk boards and around trees. Even the occasional butterfly was to be seen.

 The point of a sanctuary is to provide a place for local birds and wildlife to live in safety. For humans it can be a place of retreat and calmness. Sitting on one of the numerous benches provided along the boardwalk brings that feeling of calm into focus. It is a world of meditating and hope and sounds of a real life that is worlds beyond anything outside the sanctuary’s acres.

 Miami County has fourteen reserves listed where one can find that calmness, that hope and all those frogs and spring peepers making it known that it’s time to be out and about. This land is at its best.

First Group 2x2
First Group 2x2
Local News

Stories on people, places, events and businesses right here in Western Clark County.

Local Government

Meetings and news from local Boards of Education, Township Trustees and County Commissioners.

Sports

Arrows, Bees & Warriors; we cover all local high school sports, as well as local semi-pro and adult leagues