The Coastal Plains Outdoor School

“What do you think happened here?” asked our instructor as a small group of us stood around a fallen tree in the middle of the Louisiana State Arboretum. Was the cause of death natural? Were any others injured in the incident? It felt like the investigation scene of a whodunit. He was challenging us to apply what we had learned earlier that morning as part of “Reading the Winter Landscape: Old Growth Forests”—a one-day class presented by the Coastal Plains Outdoor School.

The CPOS’s mission is to offer outdoor immersion education that encourages people of all ages to enrich their relationship with the land, themselves, and each other. The school began offering outdoor education classes in 2020 with a “Winter Mushrooms of the Piney Woods” class. The CPOS has since held a series of outdoor education classes on a variety of topics, such as foraging and winter botany, each held in public parks or on state lands—encouraging an appreciation of our publicly-held wildlands while keeping the cost of classes down.

After college, founder and education director Matthew Herron taught in various capacities which ultimately led him to an internship in Ohio at the Glen Helen Outdoor Education Center, where he was enraptured by the concept of outdoor education and knew he had to bring it home to Louisiana.

"You can’t tell old growth from pictures, it’s something you have to feel, walk in, and create a storyline about.” —John Michael Kelly

Called by the pull of family and a deep connection to the landscape—forged in his childhood spent on the Lower Amite River southward to where the Gulf breezes blow across Elmer’s Island— Herron returned to Louisiana to earn a Master of Science in biology at the Louisiana State University in Monroe and bring the concept of formalized outdoor education to the Gulf South region. “I've seen the environmental problems we face, and I feel a commitment and an obligation to give back to this place that has given to me,” Herron said.

He recognized, “There are a lot of great environmental outdoor educators in Louisiana and throughout the Gulf South doing important work. With the CPOS, I hope to bring a cohesiveness to outdoor education in the region, where there's a need for good outdoor education that connects people and helps them relate in relationship with the land."

Simply put, outdoor education is experiential learning in the outdoors. John Michael Kelly, an adjunct instructor with the CPOS who co-led our class that day explained it this way, “I could show you four separate pictures and ask you to identify the one taken in an old growth forest. Would it be the one with the old gnarly tree? The dense understory? The fern-covered mound? Or the small sunlit saplings? It would be all of the images since they were all taken in the same forest. You can’t tell old growth from pictures, it’s something you have to feel, walk in, and create a storyline about.”

[Read about efforts to restore the marsh of Golden Meadow in Catherine Comeaux's 2022 story here.]

Giving learners the tools to better understand their experience of the natural world and create that storyline is what the CPOS excels in. Dr. Phyllis Baudoin Griffard, president of the Acadiana Native Plant Project took the “Old Growth Forest” class with the CPOS last year. As a former university biology professor with a research focus in biology education she is admittedly picky about how she learns. “I’m hesitant to participate in workshops like this due to the tendency to point and name, but I don’t always learn by just being out there; I need structure. Matthew understands how people think. There is a logic to his pedagogical approach which walks you through the key points of what makes a forest an old growth forest. His workshop sets you up to see the landscape with new eyes.”

“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.” —Matthew Herron

The group of us gathered for that day’s class were a multigenerational mix ranging in ages from eight to sixty-two; including an artist, a former US Wildlife and Fisheries agent, a professor, several homeschool students, and a smattering of Master Naturalists. Herron and Kelly guided us through a day of learning which felt more like taking a hike with a couple of good-humored ecologists eager to share their enthusiasm and knowledge than it did a “class.” We learned as we moved through the forest, stopping on the trail, as Kelly described it, “to pin that knowledge” to what we experienced.   

Gently kicking sweetgum balls down the elevated boardwalk that winds through the arboretum’s cypress-tupelo swamp, Herron remarked, “It’s like reading the headlines. When you look along the trail—you can see what’s going on in nature.” I noticed the grey path ahead littered with bright red as someone in our small group pointed to a squirrel nibbling away at a bright cluster of red swamp maple seeds.

As we came to the end of our hike, Herron asked us to reflect on a quote from George Washington Carver which goes, “I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.” The reflections from the circle were full of gratitude. I took away a new appreciation for the abundance of life we found springing from the dead mangled roots of the tip-up mounds formed when trees blew over in the forest.

I also came away excited about the potential impact of outdoor education in a post-pandemic world. As much of our learning has gone online, CPOS is calling students to the outdoors to be immersed in what cannot be communicated through a screen, but only conveyed if we “tune in” to the trail underneath our feet and experience what nature has to tell us.

The CPOS is currently working on acquiring nonprofit status as it forms a board of directors and develops a support network throughout the region. 

Visit coastalplainsoutdoors.org to learn how to become involved, sign up for a class, or learn about the affiliated native plant nursery and ecological services offered. Upcoming classes include: “Learning with the Land: An Open-Space Retreat for Nature-based Educators and Leaders” in Central Louisiana on March 10–12, and “Foraging the Gulf South: A Workshop on Wild Foods and Materials” in Brooklyn, Mississippi on March 25.