On hikes, I used to wish I was familiar with the plants and animals I was passing. It was not until I helped lead hikes for our Brownie troop that I began to carry nature guides so I could tell the kids what we were seeing. Still, the children would look quickly and move on. With this project, the kids and grown-ups switch places, and the youngsters select the information they find most interesting to pass on to others.

MATERIALS

Audubon Society field guides to the area
Watercolor paper
Drawing boards with clips
Plain pencils and colored pencils
Erasers
Sharpener
Magnifying glass

PREP

You first need to look in local hiking guides for a park trail about a half-mile long (a manageable length). Ideally, the park can also offer a ranger-guided tour for you. Don't be shy about asking. The mission for nature centers in parks all over the country is to educate people--especially children--about the environment. Ask if someone is available to take you and your kids on a short hike, or find out if you can join a scheduled tour. If you can't set up a guided tour, hike the trail by yourself ahead of time, identifying as much as you can using trail and field guides. You then can act as the ranger.

After consulting a hiking guide, I decided on a trail in the Santa Monica Mountains. With a little effort, I set up a hike with Ranger Matt Kouba. I explained our goals ahead of time and how he could help. He proved to be, in our eyes, the world's greatest ranger.

STEP 1: GETTING TO KNOW THE TRAIL

I packed sunscreen, snacks and our materials then drove the kids to the park. Ranger Matt showed us around the nature center before we headed off for the hike. He gave a brief talk on the ethics of nature: Bring back what we take in (but nothing more) and step only on the trail. He drew a line by the side of the road and said, "This side is for people, and this side is for nature. You don't go onto nature's side because that's for plants and animals." All afternoon, the kids kept reminding each other to stay on the people's side.

Matt took us on the trail, passing through four subtly different habitats. He pulled up a piece of rotting wood and used it for a vivid demonstration of life-and-decay cycles in nature (the insects eat the wood, the wood becomes soil, a new tree thrives in the soil, then one day it dies and the cycle begins again). He unearthed a rat's nest and taught the kids to identify it as such because of the angle, 43 degrees, at which the twigs were gnawed. He showed them a "posting spot," where coyotes come to sniff each other's scat and identify what others have recently had to eat.

STEP 2: MAKING THE GUIDES

During a picnic lunch back at the nature center, each child decided whether to make a trail guide or a nature guide, and I handed out plain pencils paper clipped to boards. We then headed back to the trail and walked the length of it, creating our guides along the way. Early on, with my own piece of paper, I demonstrated for those who chose trail guides how they might run two lines down the center of the paper to represent the trail. I also made a number of crude drawings--of rocks, trees, animal nests and flowers--on either side to give a sense of scale, which is a tough concept for most kids.

Those who had chosen to make nature guides could group their drawings however they saw fit: trees, then flowers, then animals, then animal homes, for instance. I encouraged all the children to caption their drawings with names, any identifying marks and other vital information.

STEP 3: THE FINAL GUIDES

When we returned home, I instructed the children to color in their guides. When their parents came by to pick them up, we all arranged a time to get together for the big hike.

STEP 4: THE KIDS LEAD THE WAY

When our whole gang arrived at the trail, my initial problem was to slow the girls down. The parents wanted to pick out every plant represented in their guides, while the girls wanted to rush ahead to point out this or that favorite flower. As the hike progressed, however, the girls settled into a rhythm of taking turns. First, one would lead the way to the next notable plant or natural phenomenon and present it, then another would take over.

For the girls, the greatest pleasure came from sharing with their families the more unusual stories they had learned. When they reached those trail points with good stories to tell, there was no rush. They waited until they had everyone's attention, and much as Ranger Matt had told them, they recounted how cowgirls and cowboys used to rub themselves down with California sagebrush for the frontier version of a bath, or how Chumash Indians would toss wild cucumber fruits and seeds into pools of water to stun and capture fish. At these moments especially, the girls fully assumed their roles as our nature guides, and we were their delighted and totally captivated initiates.