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Reply Kevin

08:03 PM on July 11, 2011

[John]
I enjoyed the Ancestor's Trail walk, even if I had to leave early. I thought it was exceptionally well organized for a "first time" event. Here are some thoughts that I had which you might wish to incorporate in next year's walk.

THANKS! John for your comments... we will try to incorporate them into next years event. I will address them later... sincerely, Kevin

Reply John

01:18 PM on July 11, 2011

I enjoyed the Ancestor's Trail walk, even if I had to leave early. I thought it was exceptionally well organized for a "first time" event. Here are some thoughts that I had which you might wish to incorporate in next year's walk.

1. Length. Must fund raising walks are 5km in length. It's not the fund raising, though, that I'm interested in ... it's the 5km (or slightly shorter). That seems to be a sweet spot that is long enough to be entertaining and short enough to encourage people to come out.

It's also short enough that smaller children can easily do the walk without being overly exhausted at the end.

This also means that you have have a 9:30AM registration, 10:00am start, walk for 90 minutes to 2 hours and finish at noon without any time pressures.

This will give sufficient time for reasonable discussions at the various "time markers". Instead of being rushed at each "sign post", Kevin would have been able to expand at length on the divisions of the biological development.

2. Passports. An excellent idea. This should be retained. I'd invest in stamps and a stamp pad for each spot ... but I haven't costed something like this so it could be prohibitive to get rubber stamps showing each of the important branches.

3. Water refills. Well done! I learned about the walk from a Booster article that didn't make any mention of bringing a water bottle for refills. It's a good thing that someone brought a case of bottled water but next year I'll bring a water bottle of my own.

4. Signs. A shorter walk will mean that you can put the signs out first thing in the morning (and first thing, with a later start, is easily doable). That way you won't have to worry about losing them the night before (or worry about any overnight rain).

5. Reptile exhibit. A pleasant surprise. But I would put it at the conclusion of the walk so that it doesn't slow down the progress of the walk.

6. Parking ... *just* enough space. Next year, whether you use the same route or a shortened one, see about getting a parking exemption for Sunday morning.

7. "Advertising" Perhaps you should identify local naturalist groups (South Peel Naturalists, North Peel Naturalists, Bruce Trail, etc.) and let them know of the walk. They might include reference to it in their newsletters. To do this, you'll need to let them know about 2-3 months in advance.

8. Late June date. Another excellent decision. You get the families before they go off to summer activities and you get your walk in after several other events such as the Bread and Honey festival. So that suggests you might want to visit the Bread and Honey festival next year to see if there is a way you can get a booth (or something) to generate some interest in the walk.

9. The documentation sheets you distribute should have some source reference material (even if it's just to Dawkins' book).

In addition, it would be good to see down the side which era we are viewing. This information was on the information posts but should also have been included on the sheets I downloaded from the website. You could easily eliminate the Elevation and Direction columns

10. A philosophical disagreement with you. I know, I know ... there are very good reasons for using the timeline and going back in time. In spite of them, I'd still start 4.5 billion years ago and move forward. Also, for the last 10 metres, I'd have a timeline showing what happens ... it will be eye-opening for many people to realize that humans don't show up until well into the last metre. It also means that you begin the walk by saying ... "for the first kilometer" (assuming you're walking a 5Km walk) "there is no life here ... just rocks and dirt and water. No trees, no flowers, no mosquitoes." And then, after one kilometer you can talk about the various theories about how life began.

Remember, these aren't scientists ... these are lay people who generally think about time in the direction of the arrow of time.