SPOOKTACULAR HALLOWEEN HIKE

Chickadee Trail, Birds Hill Provincial Park Saturday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Free

SOME people are afraid to take a hike. Not Deborah Gay De-Vries, the outreach and public engagement manager for the Manitoban chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS). What scares her most is the thought that those who don't explore beaten paths will miss out on valuable lessons about conserving our shared world.

"It turns out if you don't get out in nature, if you don't appreciate nature and learn to love nature, you're not going to care about protecting it, which is of course, what we do here," says the longtime visitor to Birds Hill, who's noted seeing fewer ground squirrels in the provincial park this past season.

Some city slickers might say that Merrell shoes don't suit them, or that a bungee-corded knapsack isn't quite their bag. But along the four-kilometre Chickadee Trail — a stroller-accessible loop that CPAWS ranks at the lower-end difficulty level of two out of five — anyone can call themselves a hiker, says CPAWS environmental education manager Carly Gray.

"I think people have a preconceived idea of wilderness, especially in Manitoba or Canada in general, that it's a scary place where big animals live, but they're also places where humans and nature have interwovenly thrived since time immemorial," says Gray.

Interacting with insects, arachnids, grosbeaks and black-capped chickadees as children has a lifelong impact. "If you are building a relationship with the natural world, you are way more likely to participate in environmental stewardship in some way and to have environmentally responsible behaviours," Gray says.

You might even see an Anastoechus, Manitoba Museum botany curator Diana Bizecki Robson's favourite bee-like fly. "I don't imagine too many people can say they have one of those," she wrote in a 2010 blog post for the museum.

Saturday's CPAWS hike will include self-guided discovery, creative programming by Wild Roots Theatre, and activities like a wishing web, where visitors to the Chickadee trail can share their "hopes, aspirations and wishes for nature," says volunteer Alex Achter.

— Ben Waldman