Friday we took our first field trip of the year. Last year we hardly ever went on any, so I told the kids if they keep their assignments up to date that we would take one once a month. With our new-found enjoyment of nature studies we decided to go to Andrew Jackson State Park. We walked the trail around the pond and visited the little museum on the grounds. We saw a lot of interesting plant life and enjoyed the ducks and geese that frequent the pond. We also saw and heard a woodpecker and other bird species which we were able to identify. There is a persimmon tree in the park and my son, who will eat just about anything, gave the fruit a try. He won’t be doing that again. We had asked the ranger if it was safe to eat and he had said that it was but that most folks did not like it. My son definitely did not like it. He told me that the fruit was sweet but it left his mouth so dry that he could not get the moisture back to his tongue for quite a while. He was swishing with large quantities of water trying to get the taste out. I was a bit worried at first that he was having an allergic reaction but later learned that if the fruit has a strong astringency and will cause this type of reaction if the fruit is not completely ripe. Hard lesson learned.
The little museum shows a bit of what life was like at the time when Andrew Jackson had lived in the Waxhaws. There is also an herb garden outside and some other colonial type displays. The kids also liked the statue of Andrew Jackson on horseback sculpted by Anne Hyatt Hutchinson. On the grounds there is also a replica of an 18th-century one-room schoolhouse that always catches their attention. After enjoying our walk and visiting the museum, we sat in the amphitheater and took out our nature journals to add sketches and observations of something we found interesting.
Despite the increasing humidity and heat of the day, it was a wonderful visit.