Education cottage ribbon cutting: Local conservation group has permanent home
Mar. 6—Members of the Wildcat Glades Friends Group remember that particular moment all too well — a sunny day several summers ago when a gentle breeze playfully blowing through the pavilion next to Shoal Creek suddenly turned violent.
"That gentle breeze we felt became a crazy, crazy wind," said Robin Standridge, the group's executive director. Papers, she said, scattered everywhere — a chaotic cloud of debris — and volunteers scrambled to chase and collect them.
"That is why we decided to (build) this," she said, gesturing at the education center behind her, the group's new home that opened to the public on Friday. "It's been a long time coming."
A gathering of about 50 people, many of them volunteers, gathered in front of the energy-efficient and eco-friendly cottage for the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
"This cottage started out as a she-shed," Standridge said. "That's what we called it, and that's what we thought it would be ... a tiny, little-bitty thing." However, the group's "crazy, crazy dream" grew. Soon, it went from a 12-by-12-foot room to the 864-square-foot structure now at Wildcat Park.
"This is amazing," she said, gesturing at the nearly $100,000 building, paid for by grants and donations — debt-free. "Isn't this amazing?"
Alice Hamilton, a 78-year-old volunteer for the group, certainly thinks so. She was one of the volunteers who sometimes felt "disheartened" when the wind would swirl and scatter papers used for the various outdoor children's educational nature classes. But she was using the word "ecstatic" on Friday to describe how she felt about the new building, which will house, or at least serve as the central hub, for a number of scheduled events — from hands-on preschool connections programs and kids and adult outdoor yoga classes to painting classes and nature exploration alongside Shoal Creek. The building has two shaded porches for different activities outside while, inside, there is a dark wall for viewing videos and cabinets for storage.
"This is really cool," Hamilton said with a visible grin beneath her mask, peering around at the cottage's interior. "We'll now be able to offer more things to a bigger variety" of children and adults. "I don't care what age you are, I think you can learn a lot of things" through nature.
"A little (more) education," she continued, "is how we'll save our world."
The Missouri Department of Conservation took over the Wildcat Glades nature center at the park in 2018 and now operates its own programs at the Shoal Creek Conservation Education Center. The friends group, which operates independently from the state as a nonprofit organization, has been offering youth programs and classes but was without its own space, ultimately sparking the idea of building the education cottage. The structure, Standridge said, was initially launched thanks to a $13,924 grant from the American Water Charitable Foundation, along with additional donations.
Volunteer Steve Gaarder, who proved instrumental in the cottage's construction, said with the cottage now in place, "nothing but good things will happen from here on out."