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 Manitoba 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 participate 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 of five — anyone can call themselves a hiker, says CPAWS environmental education manager Carly Gray.

“I think people have a precon-

— Ben Waldman