Wild rabbits and deer are grazing, cicadas are humming, fish are splashing and blue herons are flying above. Nature being unbothered by people is an uncommon sight in today’s reality, but it is not a concept completely lost, especially not in Nanjemoy.
The Nanjemoy Creek Environmental Education Center, a staple field trip location for fifth grade students in Charles public schools, has sat on 10 acres of wetlands, forests and meadows since 1989. This land is provided to students by Rick Posey and Mary Mosher.
The board of education has paid only $1 per year for more than 30 years to give students invaluable lessons about the environment that’s in their backyards.
Southern Maryland Audubon Society named Posey and Mosher their conservationists of the year, honoring the couple’s donation of land and their support of bettering the environmental education of the county’s youth.
“This was the idea to actually have a classroom that was outside,” Posey said. “So if you're talking about, you know, a succession of trees, you can show the kids, ‘Oh you look right there and you can see a succession of trees.’ You can see how it works.”
The lease does not just include the 10 acres, Mosher said, it also gives the students permission to explore their adjacent land so they can go on trails and experience the marsh that is beyond the education center.
The center features a pavilion, an apiary, an observatory, an amphibian oasis, a bald eagle enclosure, a marsh boardwalk, an aquatics lab, a pier on Nanjemoy creek and raptor houses.
This is an educational site, Posey said. The couple treats it no differently than an elementary school or a high school. The only difference is that everything the students are being taught is right in front of them through nature.
Timothy Emhoff, an environmental education resource teacher for Charles County, works at the center year round and said they see approximately 2,000 students on the site.
"[The property] is definitely a major asset for the county," Emhoff said. "It's very important. ... We're running out of land that is pristine and untouched."
Posey’s father started the lease in 1989 and Posey said the reason his father chose to do a leasehold rather than a donation of property was to protect the wildlife from too much “people pressure.”
If the land became a public park it could have diminished the quality of the experience for the children, so by opting for a lease, they could strictly use the land for environmental education.
“There's a lot of acreage here in Nanjemoy that I feel like is sort of a home for creatures that are dying out in the developed areas,” Mosher said.
The tract of land was originally 210 acres, until it was divided between Posey and his brother. Posey’s father also gave a plot to the Audubon Society and the Piscataway Indian Nation.
The entire property that his father owned is in the Maryland Environmental Trust and it cannot be developed.
Over the years Posey and Mosher said there have been many students who flourished at the center in an outdoor learning environment. The couple said it was wonderful to see these students become the top of their class for a day.
“Some of the kids that really, apparently had [behavioral] problems in the classroom blossomed when they came out here,” Posey said.
Many children in Charles County do not have access to nature, so the center teaches them not to fear the outdoors and to learn how to respect the environment, Posey said.
“You don't have to be afraid of what's out here,” he said. “The spider is not going to track you down. The snake will be fine if you just leave him alone. … It's really nice to have the kids get an opportunity to see nature is not this terrifying thing.”
Mosher said it means a lot when people years later say they remember visiting the nature center when they were young or when parents say their children loved the field trips to Nanjemoy.
The gift will carry on for many years as it is established in the couple’s will that their daughter, Irene Posey, will continue the tradition and lease.
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