The Dexter Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Group to open nature preserve, retreat center
By Edward Freundl, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: June 12, 2008
Hoping to help people establish a deeper connection to the earth, a local nonprofit group is converting a former farm into a nature preserve and education center.
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On Saturday, people will have the opportunity to tour the 145-acre property in Sharon Township and learn more about the nonprofit organization, "For Generations To Come."
"Our primary mission focuses on land conservation and restoration," said spokesman Gary Merel.
"Our programming is aimed at help adults and children develop a deeper connection to nature and to the land itself."
FGTC chairman and financial officer Tom Egan said the group members are an eclectic mix with different backgrounds but a common goal.
"A gang of us who were already in public service have pooled our resources to do something special in terms of public service," he said.
"We are engineers, artists, educators, counselors, land stewards, trades people — we have a diversity of highly skilled professionals interested in giving back."
According to Egan, the group has about 70 members, about 40 of whom are from Washtenaw County, and eight of the nine board members are county residents.
Egan said there are three parts to the idea for the sanctuary: land preservation projects, a learning center, and a place for retreat; and each piece serves the other.
"With the 'old-school' nature preserve, you lock it away and nobody uses it," he said.
"With the 'new school,' there's a lot of human interaction but it's carefully controlled."
Opening Day
This weekend marks an important milestone for the group, with an inaugural opening celebration set for noon to 6 p.m. Saturday.
Because the center is being renovated and programming is not fully in place, Egan said, it's not exactly an open house.
"The intent of the inaugural is to connect with people who want to create something here," he said.
"From noon to 6 p.m. there will be tours of the property, kids' games, a puppet show, singing, and more."
It is also an opportunity to see what the center will have to offer and a way to introduce themselves to the neighbors.
"It will be a family experience, especially for the neighbors," Egan added.
"When somebody new moves in there's a lot of natural curiosity, and we just want them to see what we plan to do here."
What they plan to do here, Egan noted, is help people re-establish their connection to the environment, and to the earth itself.
"We've used volunteering and internal resources to come as far as we have, and now we are developing partnerships with outside sources," he said.
"We're really looking for partners who want to co-create."
For example, Egan explained, one local company involved in environmental studies wants to donate to the center in order to do its training on the site.
"We're not ready to start scheduling classes or sessions yet; we're just getting a feel for what people are ready for," he said.
"We're in a one- to five-year planning stage."
The property
The land was previously owned by Dr. Clark Spike, Eastern Michigan University professor emeritus and retired head of the EMU Chemistry Department.
He and his wife, Avis, now live in the Dexter area, but in the early 1970s this dairy farmer's son wanted to get back to the land.
He had a two-story family home built near the front of the spacious property, leaving the existing farm fields, meadows and wetlands more or less undisturbed.
"It is his nature to communicate with the land; he spent his time attending to and sculpting the land, creating trails, orchards and gardens," Egan said.
"He just got to where he couldn't take care of it."
According to Egan, the idea for FGTC to buy the property started about two years ago, and the sale closed in December.
"The house had been vacant and hadn't had a lot of outside care for three years," Egan recalled.
"We put in a lot of work cleaning the place up."
It has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, kitchen, living room, office, den, dining space, fireplace on both floors and a finished basement
"We brought the furniture with us and decorated it ourselves, it made sense to make it livable," he added.
Because it is in a remote area, a couple of group members live in the house just to keep a presence on the property. In addition, the neighbors use some of the meadowland to graze their horses.
Further back on the property — in the "Hundred Acre Wood," past the whimsical small huts that Spike built for "Winnie The Pooh" characters — is a cabin he built, on the shore of the pond that he excavated himself and stocked with fish.
On a cool day in late May, Spike was sitting in the cabin having lunch with Avis, their daughter Sue Souder and other friends, and shared some of the property's history.
"We have a lot of very fond memories of it," Professor Spike said. "We originally bought the property in 1972, and moved into the house in 1977."
They brought an old camper trailer out to the pond just to have a place out of the weather to stay, "but we needed something a little more comfortable," Spike recalled, and began building the cabin in 1982.
"It was just this one room at first, and we added a room at a time," Spike said.
"I remember exactly when I built this, because I placed the main roof beam two days after breaking my wrist.
"That was kind of difficult."
Spike said he built the cabin walls and floors out of ash and butternut trees harvested from the woods and hand-fit, but also scrounged up materials to use.
The boards for the roof of the cabin and elsewhere on the property came from the former EMU football stadium when it was demolished.
"For $400 they let me have as much as I could carry off, and I made many a trip to the sawmill with wood from here," Spike said.
His daughter explained that the FGTC offer to buy the place was "a perfect fit."
"Mom and Dad didn't want this place to go to a developer, and this sanctuary offer kind of fell into our lap," Souder said.
"I'd gone to see a lawyer about something and though the course of conversation he knew about this group, and it went from there," she added.
Spike said his family is comfortable with the sanctuary plan because the group's aims matched their own.
"That really appealed to us, and we're pleased with what's happened," he said.
And according to Souder: "They've welcomed my parents in here anytime they want — that was important."
Egan said FGTC was particularly fortunate in finding the property because it's considered a "mature sanctuary" already.
"The diversity of natural features all in one place makes it perfect for a sanctuary," he said.
"It takes years for habitat like this to mature, and it was exactly in the manner of what we were looking for.
"It exudes a human care and connection to the earth."
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