Creatures Are the Teachers as Children Study Outdoors

On a bus packed with children riding to Eaton Canyon one day last week, the talk turned to poisonous reptiles.

“I’m hoping to see a rattlesnake so I can take a picture of it,” said Angela Tatum, 11. Though only 10 and 11 years old, members of the fifth-grade class from McKinley School in San Gabriel explained with authority about jaw size, color markings, poison sacs and the shapes of beady snake eyes.

For the past three weeks, they had been primed by teacher Sandor Junkunc for this day, when their school bus would trundle up to Eaton Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains and disgorge 30 hooting and yowling children. It would be Day 2 of a three-day nature outing that has become an integral and much anticipated part of the fifth-grade science curriculum for students in the San Gabriel School District.

In the course of their all-day hike, various students would spot a nearly camouflaged deer, joust with poison oak, peer fruitlessly behind sun-warmed rocks for rattlesnakes, exclaim over the twig nest of a dusky-footed wood rat and inhale the slightly sweet and musky odor of California sage, which grows wild throughout the canyon.

Along the way, they would also write voluminous entries in their daily logs, sketch their surroundings, ford five swollen streams, collect plant specimens and generally experience the cycle of nature in a way that science books can only hint at.

By 10 a.m., when the bus pulled into the Eaton Canyon Nature Park, the sharp-eyed youngsters had already spotted their first wildlife.

“Look, there’s a red-tail,” went up a cry from the back of the bus, as one child spied a hawk circling lazily overhead. Others soon took up the cry. “Mr. Junkunc, Mr. Junkunc, it’s in a thermal, look how it’s flying,” yelled another student, referring to the warm air currents on which the birds glide in search of prey.

For 20 years, Junkunc, an outdoors aficionado steeped in nature and historical lore, has been the Pied Piper of Eaton Canyon, taking classes into the San Gabriel Mountains to learn about the flora and fauna just a 25-minute ride away from busy urban streets.

It used to be that Junkunc took just his own fifth-grade class, but several years ago, the McKinley teacher won a state grant that enabled him to expand the program to all district elementary schools.

He has since trained other teachers and pulled together a comprehensive instruction manual. Junkunc has also been cited by the California Department of Education for his innovative, interdisciplinary program, which includes such elements as the “Conservation Pledge” in which students recite an old Indian saying: “In all of Nature . . . leave nothing but footprints; take nothing but memories.”

Indeed, this is more than just a hands-on science lecture. Junkunc gathers his rapt class under the blue sky and reads softly to them from the poems of William Wordsworth, the essays of Henry David Thoreau and the musings of naturalist historian John Muir.

He recites Taos Indian poetry and Navajo prayers. He explains patiently why they shouldn’t litter and shows how the Gabrieleno Indians who once inhabited the foothills pounded the fibrous century plant into strands that they could weave into rope and baskets.

He makes the class draw the effects of running water on stream beds and write down three words that describe a quiet, emerald hill where they stop to learn about the horehound plant and suck on samples of the bitter, old-fashioned sugar candy made from its leaves.

At 10:45 that morning, after a brief tour of the reptiles, rodents and birds at the Eaton Canyon Nature Center Musuem, Junkunc gathered his charges around him near the arroyo at the base of the hills to formally start the day’s lesson.

“I want you all to be quiet for a moment and tune in to nature. You don’t have to close your eyes, but I don’t want you to move. Now, what animal sounds can you hear and identify?” he asked.

“Scrub jay,” offered one student.

“Ground squirrel,” piped up another.

“Tractor,” bellowed out a third to sudden giggles, as the grinding gears of development jangled the morning stillness.

Next Junkunc had them write down the temperature (67 degrees), note the weather (sunny, a few white clouds) and wet their forefingers to gauge the direction and strength of the wind (a very faint breeze from the south).

Then it was time to cross the first of several streams, which, coursing swiftly along after the spring rains, reached up to the children’s knees. Students threw big rocks into the creek to form a bridge along which they could cross.

But some opted to splash directly across, wielding their walking sticks made from broom handles and canes, impervious to the cold water that would squelch in their tennis shoes for next few hours.

Junkunc prepares painstakingly for these outings. In addition to the weeks of classroom instruction that cover everything from animal habitats and plant life to drought, conservation and how to avoid rattlesnakes and poison oak, he takes about five reconnaissance hikes on preceding weekends to make sure that storms, frosts or other phenomena haven’t damaged any of the natural exhibits he plans to show his students.

On the hikes, he brings a heavy backpack stuffed with bottled water, a first aid kit and an antidote for poisonous snakebites, including a contingency plan with instructions for students to follow in case he is bitten and incapacitated.

But in 20 years of hikes, there have been no mishaps, Junkunc says, although one year his class ran across five rattlesnakes.

And last year, one contrary boy, after being taught scrupulously to recognize and avoid poison oak, raced up to a bush, grabbed a handful of the unpleasant leaves and began rubbing them over his body, screaming, “I’m immune, I’m immune.”