The Winchester Star. Monday April 20, 2015
Glen Swiggart and Margaret Guthrie take a close look at river insects in a specimen jar during a
program Sunday afternoon at Shenandoah University’s Shenandoah River Campus at Cool Spring
Battlefield in eastern Clarke County. (Photo by Scott Mason/The Winchester Star)
Nature abounds at SU’s
Shenandoah River campus
By Raya Zimmerman
BERRYVILLE
Great blue herons, bald eagles and water insects were just a sampling of what
Shenandoah University students showed to the public on Sunday at the
university’s Shenandoah River Campus at Cool Spring Battlefield.
As a part of an undergraduate environmental studies program, students
interpreted natural features on the Civil War battlefield, located along the
Shenandoah River off Harry Byrd Highway (Va. 7) in eastern Clarke County. In
more recent years, the property was the site of Virginia National Golf Course.
Students oversaw eight
stations that were set
up along a roughly 2.5mile walking trail.
Visitors tour the river campus,
where Shenandoah University
students offered a program on
Sunday about the 195-acre
property. The river campus is
open to the public year-round
dawn to dusk.
At “The Pond Life” station, freshman Hayden Bauserman said he caught bugs in
a pond on the property, including glass shrimp, a fishing spider and a water
spider, and displayed them in jars.
“A lot of people have liked the damselfly,” Bauserman said. “It looks like their tails
are split into three parts, but it’s really their gills. They’re related to dragonflies.”
He also said people were amazed to learn that the seeds on cattails are the
female part of the plant, and the male part is the upper stock, which holds male
pollen. “I’ve learned more about nature in this semester than I have in my whole
life,” he added.
At the “Shenandoah River” station, junior Sydney Vonada talked about how there
are a lot of man-made chemicals in the river, from products such as paint. “The
chemicals can be found in the fatty cells of fish,” she said, advising not to eat
certain kinds of fish.
She also said that many people were surprised to learn that the river flows north,
just like the Nile River. SU hasn’t been able to do a lot of research on the
Shenandoah River yet since it acquired the property only recently, she said.
After the golf course closed in 2012, SU acquired the 195-acre river campus in
April 2013, thanks to a public-private partnership between the state, the Civil War
Trust and SU. Under terms of a conservation easement, SU manages the
property to protect its natural and historic features.
The Battle of Cool Spring took place on the property on July 17-18, 1864. It was
a prelude to the final Shenandoah Valley Campaign of the Civil War, with
Confederate troops holding back Union forces that were pursuing them across
the Shenandoah River at Cool Spring.
Several groups of people biked and walked around the stations under an
overcast sky on Sunday.
“I’ve lived in the area for 37 years and watched this property transition from a golf
course to what it is now,” said Margaret Guthrie, who was visiting the different
stations. “I have just been thrilled to see everything [SU] has done to marshal it
back to a natural setting.”
Woodward Bousquet, professor of environmental studies and biology at SU, said
students in his Cool Spring program are receiving hands-on experience that
they’ll be able to transfer to their professional careers.
“I want to help them not only feel competent, but also confident,” he said. “A lot of
jobs in their fields require them to share their knowledge.”
If members of the public were lucky enough, they saw a bald eagle through a
scope at the “Great Blue Heron” station. “We think they’re nesting right now,”
freshman Kimberlyn Abel said as she pointed to a tree across the Shenandoah
River.
People could look through a different scope to see the herons, which have long,
dagger-like beaks used for catching fish.
Ashley Landes, a senior at SU who was helping supervise on Sunday afternoon,
said university students travel to the river campus to do different kinds of
research, year-round.
Youth group organizations have also been invited to use the campus, she said.
— Contact Raya Zimmerman at rzimmerman@winchesterstar.com