Black Hill Discovery Center - Montgomery Parks (Episode 67)

"I want them to look back and say, 'This was my school'—not just a park I visit."

What if a child’s first classroom wasn’t surrounded by four walls, but by 2,500 acres of wild Maryland landscape? In this episode, host Missy Rentz sits down with Katrina Fauss, Principal Park Naturalist at Black Hill Discovery Center, to explore the transformative power of nature-based education.

Hidden just miles from the bustle of Washington, D.C., Black Hill Regional Park is more than just a scenic backdrop for hikers and boaters—it is a "hidden gem" serving as a vital reservoir for the region and a living laboratory for the community. Katrina shares how their unique Forest Preschool and "play-first" philosophy are fostering a lifelong sense of wonder in children and adults alike.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The "Hidden Gem" of Montgomery County: Discover the history of Black Hill, from its 19th-century gold mining roots to its current role protecting 4 billion gallons of emergency drinking water.
• Nature as a Classroom: The philosophy behind Forest Schools and why "playing in the mud" is a critical developmental milestone.
• The "Birth to Death" Continuum: How the park serves every age group, from 10-day-old hikers to 99-year-olds on pontoon tours.
• Wildlife & Recreation: Tips for spotting the resident nesting Bald Eagles, navigating 20 miles of trails, and making the most of Little Seneca Lake.
• The Power of Connection: Why county parks became essential "fabric of life" sanctuaries during the pandemic and beyond.

About Our Guest:

Katrina Fauss is the Principal Park Naturalist at Black Hill Discovery Center. With over a decade of experience in nature-based education, she is a passionate advocate for play-based learning and environmental stewardship.

Resources Mentioned:

• Black Hill Discovery Center: MontgomeryParks.org
• Register for Programs: ActiveMontgomery.org
• Natural Start Alliance: (Resources for finding nature preschools nationwide)
• Association of Nature-Based Educators

Follow The Parks Podcast: For full show notes and links to everything mentioned in today’s episode, visit TheParksPodcast.com.

Transcript

0:01

Imagine spending your childhood learning in nature, playing in the mud, and building ecosystems. And this episode we'll learn how nature can enhance development and a sense of wonder and joy. Join me as we explore Black Hill Discovery Center. I'm your host, Missy Rentz, and this is The Parks Podcast.

Missy Rentz 0:25

I am really excited to welcome Katrina Fauss to The Parks Podcast. Katrina is the Principal Park naturalist at Black Hill Discovery Center at Montgomery Parks in Montgomery County, Maryland. Katrina, welcome to The Parks Podcast.

Katrina Fauss 0:40

Thank you, Missy. I'm so excited to be here.

Missy Rentz 0:43

I am so excited to talk to you. We met several months ago at a conference, and the work that you're doing there just blew me away. I remember sitting in a session that you presented and I just was like beaming with excitement. So let's dive in and we can teach all of the listeners about the amazing work that you are doing. First of all, let's talk about some park stats. Black Hill Discovery Center is located in Montgomery County, Maryland. It is part of the Black Hill Park. The park opened in 1986 and is more than 2,500 acres. Just some field notes for everybody to know the property is, has a history of gold mining since the late 18 hundreds, and it's a fascinating story. The mining holes were discovered by George Chadwick when he bought the farm in on, in 1947, and he filled most of those holes in. And turned it into a dairy farm, but there are, there is still at least one mining hole there, which is really cool. It's the home to little Seneca Lake. The park is filled with all sorts of recreation, including 20 miles of hiking trails, biking trails, fishing, boating, playgrounds, a dog park and more. And, it's home to the Discovery Center, which helps visitors learn about the area's diverse ecosystem. It's such a great park, and who knew it was just a few miles from Washington, DC.

Katrina Fauss 2:06

It is, we are a hidden gem. Often when people come, they say, I've lived here for 20 years and did not know this park was here. So yeah, definitely a hidden gem in Montgomery County.

Missy Rentz 2:16

I am one of those and I wonder if I wasn't into park so I didn't know, or it is just hidden. 'cause even a couple of a couple of months ago when I stopped by you, you are like, you have to have the Google Maps. It's not easy to find For sure.

Katrina Fauss 2:29

Yeah, we're we're just off of 270, but I think we're just far enough over that people don't realize there's this lake here,

Missy Rentz 2:36

yeah, and you're driving through these like town home neighborhoods and you think there's a park here and all of a sudden, boom, there's 2,500 acres of land, which is

Katrina Fauss 2:44

Yeah, we are Montgomery Park's, second largest regional park, so we are to be called a hidden gem is fun.

Missy Rentz 2:51

Yeah. Okay, so why is the park important?

Katrina Fauss 2:54

So this park was created in the name of drinking water, if you will. So we have a reservoir called Little Seneca Lake, and the reservoir itself belongs to the Washington Suburban Sanitation Commission, and they created this 505 acre lake as emergency drinking water. So the idea is if our region should have a drought and it has, it's been used twice, then this would be just enough water to fill in the time period between the, when they needed it and when they would also release water from Jennings Randolph Reservoir out in Western Maryland and West Virginia, much larger reservoir. So this water just keeps us with enough water until that water gets down river.

Missy Rentz 3:38

A really important, you don't think about that when you're just coming in enjoying the beach or putting a boat on the water.

Katrina Fauss 3:45

So it's about 505 acres. It's 4 billion gallons of water, and it's estimated that is about three days of drinking water.

Missy Rentz 3:54

Wow, that's impressive. And you're the first regional park I've spoken to. Hopefully the first of many.

Katrina Fauss 4:00

Yay.

Missy Rentz 4:00

Why is it yeah, why is it so important that counties create these space to protect our lands and water and things like that? Why is that important?

Katrina Fauss 4:10

I think that county parks are woven into the fabric of our lives, right? When I think back to my history as a park goer, it's early things like the parks near my house. And that's what our county parks are. We are part of people's everyday life, and that's what makes them special and that's what makes them important to people. So we manage over 416 parks. We manage over 38,000 acres of our county. And so we've got teeny tiny parks that are your neighborhood playground. We've got a lot, we manage a lot of stream valley and protect a lot of streams. So the water protection we provide, and then we have these large expanses of wilderness, if you as wild as you could be. And right outside of DC. We are the second largest. Our sister park across 270 is Little Bennett, and that's over 3,500 acres. Some of the most wild land in Montgomery County. So there's those big things, but they're also the parks that people are walking every day. These are the places you take your dog. They're the places you take your celebrations of life. Can't tell you how many weddings we've witnessed, how many memorials of life, of people's celebrating people's life, of graduation parties, of just joy, but also finding nature. And in COVID it was never more obvious how important we were to people when, we were trying to figure out how to get through COVID, but you drive into the park and there were just people six feet apart everywhere in the park. This was very clearly an important part of their life.

Missy Rentz 5:38

Yeah. And sometimes I think when I'm when I'm talking, when I'm say The Parks Podcast, I think people think of, the big national parks. And it is. It is that, and it is also just being outside and sometimes that's just a city block where you can, be with trees and hear birds and climb on a playground and those are really important moments for us as

Katrina Fauss 6:04

right. They're so important. One of our parks that nearby that I like to do some programming in is Germantown Town Center Park. And it it's right outside the library in Germantown and Germantown's a pretty urban area, and this park protects wetlands. It was built around a wetland and it does a cool job of it in an artistic way, and it serves this community in the middle of this like suburban, urban area. And it's a tiny bit of wild. So those are the things that I think county park systems give to people in a different way than say, national and state parks, which are also super important.

Missy Rentz 6:37

I am guilty of oftentimes seeing a park and going, oh, that park is there for the soccer fields, or whatever the case may be. And then when I dig deeper, like with your park, and I learn all that it does most of the time not, and I don't wanna diminish that soccer field is very important too. It serves a huge purpose for a community and for health and all of that stuff. Yet so many of these parks are meant to do things that benefit us in other ways, like the water or making sure we have, oxygen because we have our natural habitat or protecting species of animals that are endangered in our communities and we keep pushing out because we're putting in big highways and whatnot.

Katrina Fauss 7:22

Like a lot of times our land comes from developments, right? So they're, we protect a portion of the water or something like that as urban. Or suburban expansion happens in neat areas and stuff. So there's important work that we do as a county park system that you probably don't even see if you're here for a picnic.

Missy Rentz 7:41

No, definitely not. So I met you at the Maryland Outdoor Recreation Conference, and I often think about the benefits people gained from being outside and being in parks and just my own world. Obviously, it was a key reason why I started The Parks Podcast is to help educate people on why our outdoor spaces are there and how do we use them. You introduced me to this whole new concept in outdoor space, which is educational programs and I was a kid that played outside, but when I think about having my preschool be an out, be outside, like that's game changing for development and I just wonder how that changes someone and their future to have such a great connection with nature to be their entry to life.

Katrina Fauss 8:31

And I think for so many of us we either we're lucky enough to have an outdoor childhood or at least have portions of it that were outdoors or I do find in our field too, there's often the opposite. That people who were city kids and want to give that to. And I think about this Rachel Carson quote that I, is probably my mantra and what I would like to leave this world with is that "if a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in." And so I hope to be that one adult. And so when we're striving to put together programs. Those are the things that we wanna do. And when we think about the child as a whole from, I often joke that we wanna do from birth to death here at Black Hill that you want, we wanna provide this continuum of adding to your nature experiences and to your outdoor life. That's how we've. Created the things we've done and also in response to our community and what they want and what they need. And outdoor nature-based preschools or forest schools are kind of, I would say they've been around and they've come to the forefront. And so we've, for 10 years now, have provided a very affordable kind of option and public park facing option to, to do that sort of programming here.

Missy Rentz 9:54

I parked right in front of the Discovery Center and you have these like games and gardens and things. So I felt like I don't know if that's geared towards kids, but I learned a lot just by, playing in that space that day.

Katrina Fauss 10:09

Yeah, so I would say we really do have a focus of play, and that play is for everybody. So we, we have nature play spaces, that's what we call them all around the Discovery Center. So we have sandbox or we have a fairy garden. We have big logs to play in. We have a mud kitchen. We really like mud a lot. We run a mud festival. We do a mud fest at a different park in June. So play is one thing that we spend a lot of time thinking about and doing. In play-based education, which is our idea is we want people to love being outside and we want them to love this place in particular.

Missy Rentz 10:46

Yeah. And you've got you have the preschool and there's the exhibits, and then there's also, camps and other programs that take place in the park throughout the year.

Katrina Fauss 10:56

Yeah, so we're programming, all year long. We have four full-time naturalists and seasonal naturalists, and so we each program so you get your traditional kind of nature center programming. We also do pontoon rides and kayak lessons and kayak tours. We see thousands of school kids a year, so we also do curriculum based programming that helps. What we're trying to do is lessen the burden on teachers so that they can make their cause to get outta school, to get outside. So we align our field trips with school curriculum. So we're doing thousands of those. We're seeing thousands of school kids a year doing

Missy Rentz 11:32

Okay, and so we're we've just talked about kids, but you talked about, from birth to death as the park. There's also education for those of us who aren't children.

Katrina Fauss 11:43

Yes, absolutely. So we really do. So we also have and we as a county have a goal to provide adult education as well. So we do van trips that go to other parks. We also do I, we do some silly play-based programming for adults, which I wanna up a little bit. We did a witchy paddle This. Fall. And I had a, an adult come up and be like, it's be like, thank you for asking adults to play. And I was like, oh, you've just given me a new cause in life.

Missy Rentz 12:12

I have to tell you, so I, when I came, I went on a hike and I was hiking by the school and you spotted me and said, "Hey, kids, say hi to Missy," and in unison these, I don't know, it felt like it was a million kids, but I'm sure it wasn't a million kids. They all go, "hi, Missy", and it made my day to have these kids interact with me in such a simple, fun way and just their joy was just so contagious and it lived with me for the entire

Katrina Fauss 12:48

Oh, I'm so glad. So I think what that speak to speaks to is that they have ownership over this place like that, they are such, when we do have visitors to our program, they're the most welcoming kids of Hey, come see this. And come see my special place. And that's what we want. I want them to look back on their childhood and be like, I went to school at Black Hill. This was my school, not just a park I visit, but this was my school. This was a place I loved. And I think that when I see them do that for people they even, they surprise me all the time, but when I see them be so welcoming to other people, I think it's because they feel at home here.

Missy Rentz 13:29

Yeah, I can see that. That's not something that's usually in curriculum so it's a benefit that people get. What are some of the other benefits of participating in outdoor education programs? Certainly at Black Hill, but I'm sure it, it is throughout the country. If there's an outdoor education program.

Katrina Fauss 13:46

Yeah so there's a long history of environmental and outdoor education within the country, but also within Maryland has a very strong outdoor and environmental education organization. That's, a lot of times working with schools like public schools to, to become green centers and do more outdoor education. The benefits. Are so many that I did pull my coworkers to see what they thought as well.

Missy Rentz 14:12

Good.

Katrina Fauss 14:13

the things that came up we talked about the health connections of just feeling good, of being able to get outside and walk and the fresh air and stuff. The big thing that strikes me is the connections you make. Connections to each other, connections to the place. The place is so important to me personally. And then, that this is the real thing. So when kids are learning something in the classroom and they're looking at books and pages are probably, now they're looking at tablets and things on the internet, you might learn about an ecosystem, but then to take those, that knowledge and bring it to a park and see it and play. When we do our habitats field trip, we're talking about the things that you need for a successful habitat, and then we go out and have the kids collect the data and find those things. That's the real thing. You can't beat that.

Missy Rentz 14:59

Yeah. No way. No I was at a park recently speaking to a ranger and they talk about the curiosity that the, that nature sparks in kids, but also in adults and how once you get in there and you. Your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems start to regulate and go, oh yeah, okay. I'm in nature. My body knows how to be in nature. And then to really get curious about what's around you.

Katrina Fauss 15:24

Yeah. And the skills that you are able to put into play outside and in nature of observation of that curiosity, of that wonder are gonna go beyond that lesson. They're gonna go beyond that day. And then I think the joy. If you to be at the receiving end of the bus in the morning, like when they all come off the bus and they filed past our tiny little pond, which is beautiful, but it's a tiny little pond outside our center and they're, they haven't even done anything yet and they're going, it's best day ever. First of all, that's, it's a lot of high expectations, but they, all they did was step off the bus. How beautiful of a day are we gonna have if that's how we're starting

Missy Rentz 16:05

We could all probably learn from that. This is the be tomorrow morning, I'm gonna wake up and "this is the best day ever."

Katrina Fauss 16:12

And it's just because they see nature. They drove this long drive of trees into the center. There's a lake in front of them, and so these kids, these first and second and third graders know that this is a special place and know that there's something great coming.

Missy Rentz 16:29

I love that. That's really beautiful. Let's talk about planning a visit to the park, and I wanna break it down in two ways. First, I wanna talk about the park from a more of a recreational standpoint, and then I wanna dive into the education piece of it. Does someone need to have reservations for activities? Like how do you visit a park? If I wake up and I'm in, Gaithersburg and I say I'm, I wanna go to Black Hill this morning,

Katrina Fauss 16:52

so first you have to know we exist. So visit our website.

Missy Rentz 16:56

Good point.

Katrina Fauss 16:57

then so yeah montgomeryparks.org has a lot of great information and it's often you can do a, there's a thing that says find a park and it. Two, we'll have the list of activities on the side and it will link. Now many of our activities, we request that you sign up for them. Some of them have a small fee. There's a lot of free activities too, but it's just really helpful to know you're coming. So that's through activemontgomery.org. And so those are this, that'll give you the more information too. And it'll give you a calendar of events. You can create your own guide where you can choose what filters you're looking for. And lots of programs you probably don't even know we do will be found on there. And then if you're coming for, say you wanting to picnic or boat, then you would, picnic pavilions are also reservable on our website. So I'd say start with just a quick dive into the website. And then you're gonna I would say stop at the discovery center first, even if we're not open. We're open Friday through Sunday, but we have maps, we have information on the outside of the building as well. So you can grab a map if you didn't download a the GIS program or do the map online.

Missy Rentz 18:04

Yeah. And there's, lots of hiking trails or the water or relaxing on the beach. And it can be just as much as just show up.

Katrina Fauss 18:11

Yeah, it really is. I was gonna say, that's partly why I was joking about just find us first. 'cause if you just come, you'll find things to do.

Missy Rentz 18:18

Yes, absolutely.

Katrina Fauss 18:19

If you, and if you come to the Discovery Center, there's, that's a trailhead, or we have, if you just follow signs in the park, if you go to the boat ramp, there's trail heads there. You can just, I find, and this is honestly one of my favorite things to do in parks, people come and they just sit just sitting near water is a pastime here with, you'll see people with their camp chairs or they'll use a bench and they'll just sit. So just sitting is a great park activity.

Missy Rentz 18:44

Yes, I agree. And and then there's the water side and the okay, I went across, I would say it was a bridge, and there was this like bank of Kayaks. Is it something where people like rent a place so they can store their kayak there? Is that what that

Katrina Fauss 18:58

Yeah, so that's they're called mooring sites and you can rent those, so you can keep your boat here when the lake is open for

Missy Rentz 19:05

Okay.

Katrina Fauss 19:06

And that's a great service in a community that has small space living.

Missy Rentz 19:10

Heck yeah. Yeah. If you can't keep it in a lot of those DC apartments keep a kayak. Are there ways to rent equipment if you don't

Katrina Fauss 19:19

So we do, yes. So Thursday usually, and I would say, I don't know what their hours for this summer will be, but usually Thursday through Sunday, Memorial Day to Labor Day, our boat rental is open and they rent kayaks and paddle boards and rowboats, and canoes.

Missy Rentz 19:34

And we've talked about hiking, we've talked about sitting, we've talked about the boating and the beach. What else can people do when they. When they come to the park.

Katrina Fauss 19:43

Sure. So this is a great fishing lake. People love fishing here. It's actually a trophy bass area, so it has special bass regulations, but you just need, if you're over 16, you need a Maryland fishing license is all you need, and then your own equipment. We do offer fishing programs. So you can sign up for that if you don't have your own equipment. Just wanna give fishing a try.

Missy Rentz 20:05

And the other thing I loved is that you encourage birdwatching, and that's something like, I'm really, I'm, I don't know anything other than what a cardinal looks like, but there's, there are spaces, and I went in this like little pavilion where you had pictures of the birds and you look out the little window and you can witness what's going on. And so I, I also think the wildlife, you think maybe there's not wildlife so close to dc but there's a lot of wildlife

Katrina Fauss 20:31

So much. Yeah, so we're known for a pretty good spot for winter waterfowl, so that's, we get a lot of birders in winter. We also have a nesting pair of eagles, so she's currently sitting on the nest. We think maybe there could be babies.

Missy Rentz 20:47

Are you one of the parks that has a camera on it or?

Katrina Fauss 20:49

No, it's, they move it around a bit. And so it's mostly been on private property that's just adjacent to the lake. But we have a naturalist here that keeps track of them.

Missy Rentz 20:59

Oh, that's pretty cool. That's neat to see. If you come to the park, can you see where it is? Can you tell where it is?

Katrina Fauss 21:04

So yes, so if you go off of 121 is Clarksburg Road, so it's a different part of the park. So not to the Discovery Center. You can't see it directly if you can see it, but if you go on 1 21, you can see the nest from there.

Missy Rentz 21:17

Oh, that's so cool.

Katrina Fauss 21:18

It's so fun. I, this morning I got outta my car and the Eagle did a fly by.

Missy Rentz 21:23

Oh, that's so special. So maybe everybody bring binoculars too, just in case like that's.

Katrina Fauss 21:29

and maybe a guide or an app. If you don't, and we have our deck, even if our building is not open on the inside. Our deck is gorgeous and is such a view, and that is open as long as the park is open so that you can access our deck. We have chairs, we have half picnic tables, so you could bring your lunch and just sit on the deck and bird watch.

Missy Rentz 21:48

I love it. Okay, so now let's talk about the School and Discovery Center. What is the best way to learn about what is available?

Katrina Fauss 21:56

For our public Programs Act in Montgomery that I talked about earlier, so that you can find all of our public programs on there. If you're in the park, we do have a paper calendar. We like to go a little bit old school. You can just pick that up from us as well. If you're a school group wanting to book, we have a reservation with our administrative assistant, does our reservations. Those, I will say book up very fast. So we're already booked for the spring. We'll start very soon, probably next week, start seeing school groups and we will be booked until June. We she has dates that she opens those up, so she just takes 'em in order of people blackHillnature@montgomeryparks.org is our email address.

Missy Rentz 22:35

We'll put all of these links in the show notes on TheParksPodcast.com just so people have easy access. We talked about camps, and I know you know this is this, it's, we're in March now. This May Air March or April and camps are booked right now. But if you're listening to this and thinking about camps for your kids, that's a great thing to, to use or to look up in parks.

Katrina Fauss 23:00

Camps are, first of all, they're just fun. I am a camp kid myself and I worked through camp counselor ness and really I would say being a camp counselor is what prepared me best for this job. So camp is super important to what we do, and we run camps throughout the summer for all ages, and they open in January. They are full, they fill up within minutes of registration opening here. But they're about being outside. They're about adventures. They're about play in the woods. And they, what I really have come to enjoy about them even more is that we get to watch these kids grow up. I have preschoolers after doing preschool for 10 years, I now have kids in camp that I had as preschoolers. So to see this continuity of watching people grow up is just such a gift.

Missy Rentz 23:48

Yeah, this camp is full, but there might be others within Montgomery County or if you're not in, in Montgomery County and listening to this, check your local parks and some state parks even have camps. So check your parks

Katrina Fauss 24:00

Yeah, check your parks for camps. 'cause I think it's a valuable resource. And I've worked in other counties that also have summer camps, so check your county parks for camps for programs you probably didn't even think about.

Missy Rentz 24:12

What about the preschool program?

Katrina Fauss 24:14

So we call ours preschool in the park. And it's two days a week. It also fills up pretty quickly. But so for us personally, if you were very attached to Black Hill, you should email me. And I'll put you on the list to keep you in the loop of when registration's open. But I would encourage you to look around and find out who the people in your community are running forest preschools or nature preschools. There's a really great organization called the Association of Nature-Based Educators, and they do a lot of trainings of people running for school programs. So they are a great resource or natural Start Alliance also keeps a list of where these types of programs are.

Missy Rentz 24:55

That's, and that's such a good point 'cause we're talking about looking for them in your parks, but there are a lot of individuals that in private, private people who, who create nature preschools that take place outside in parks. That's great to have those other links.

Katrina Fauss 25:10

Ours. I think the special thing in ours is that it's in a park, so we get to do things like have our maintenance guys show up with a backhoe and things like that, that maybe your traditional nature school might not have.

Missy Rentz 25:20

Yeah. Oh, I think there's so many benefits and with yours, with all of the activities that's so cool to see. What age ranges are a lot of these programs for?

Katrina Fauss 25:30

So our preschool is for three and a half to five. I, we do run programs from birth to death almost. I, but from really all ages we mean it. So I've had a 10 day old on a hike and I've had a 99-year-old on a pontoon.

Missy Rentz 25:45

Oh gosh. Okay alright, so this is for everybody and. What do you feel like is the prime time for people to start thinking about things like summer camps? I know you said it opens in January for you guys, but

Katrina Fauss 25:57

Yeah, I think a lot of people do start, at least in Montgomery County and I would say, I think that us being a heavily populated area, probably that is accelerated. But they start. I start getting emails from parents like in December about summer camps but probably other parts of the country is a little less intense of a schedule.

Missy Rentz 26:17

And what about preschools? Do those kind of run on a similar schedule of registration?

Katrina Fauss 26:21

I would think so for us, we open our, we do it in two sessions. We do a fall and a winter spring. So we take a little bit of a break in January just to give us all a breather for weather and just us resetting. So we run in two sessions and we do our first registration in July for the fall.

Missy Rentz 26:40

Okay.

Katrina Fauss 26:40

I would guess for more private kind of programs like this, they probably have a different registration schedule.

Missy Rentz 26:47

Okay. All right. Perfect. We finish each episode with a speed round of questions. Just answer with what first comes to mind.

Katrina Fauss 26:56

Oh, sure. Okay.

Missy Rentz 26:58

What is your earliest park memory

Katrina Fauss 27:01

So I tried to text my mom for this answer.

Missy Rentz 27:03

That's cheating?

Katrina Fauss 27:04

I know it is. I, so I come from such a park loving family that I find this hard to answer. I think it's probably the city park in Hagerstown, which is one of my favorite parks in the world. It's got these beautiful lakes. It's very old park. It's got structures like that in terms of like everyday life. And then I have really great memories of early cabin camping with my grandparents in a. Pennsylvania State Park called Clear Creek, which is beautiful.

Missy Rentz 27:34

What made you love the parks?

Katrina Fauss 27:36

I come from a park loving family. We lived in parks as kids. My mom, we lived in an apartment when I was really young, and it was my mom and I think it was a cheap, easy way to entertain me, is my guess. I think she too has a connection to parks and so it was just what we did in. In my career, I've gotten to work as a nonprofit partner with state and national parks, and just really then fell in love even more with how parks operate and the people that operate parks. So to get to work in a park is a dream.

Missy Rentz 28:09

What's your favorite thing about Black Hill Regional Park?

Katrina Fauss 28:13

I love the community here. I love the people. I love the way that people love this place and that they, include us in their community.

Missy Rentz 28:23

What's your favorite thing to do at Black Hill Park?

Katrina Fauss 28:27

Oh, think Play in the Woods. I love taking kids to play in the woods.

Missy Rentz 28:33

What park have you yet to visit, but it's on your bucket list and why?

Katrina Fauss 28:37

So this is a little bit of a cheater answer. I have a goal to try and visit every Maryland state Park. I have a lot more to go. I may be halfway through. So all of Maryland state parks,

Missy Rentz 28:49

What are three must haves you pack for a park visit?

Katrina Fauss 28:54

I always have a pack, like a backpack with me, a bottle of water. I, this isn't. Answer I maybe I'm not proud of, but I always have my phone 'cause I also like geocaching. So I probably wanna see if there's any geocaches if I'm in a place that allows it. And let's see. And I like taking pictures. So the phone is, does play a part. And I do have a camp chair 'cause I also like sitting in parks.

Missy Rentz 29:20

And are you in a tent, camper, or cabin?

Katrina Fauss 29:23

My soul's in a tent. My body's in a cabin.

Missy Rentz 29:28

Are you hiking with or without trekking poles?

Katrina Fauss 29:30

So you, when we met at the outdoor summit, told me that this is a thing. I do have trekking poles. I probably have my walking stick, but I, in the car, I do have a set of treking poles and I just appreciate, anyway, people get outside,

Missy Rentz 29:44

and what is your favorite trail snack?

Katrina Fauss 29:47

A pepperoni sandwich.

Missy Rentz 29:50

What is your best animal sighting?

Katrina Fauss 29:53

I once was kayaking and had fledgling barred owls appear, and then I thought there were two of 'em. And when all of a sudden a, an owl pellet came down through the trees and landed on my arm and my boat, so there was a fledgling owl above me and had thrown up an owl pellet and that it was magical. It was magical.

Missy Rentz 30:17

that's so cool. What is your favorite sound in the park?

Katrina Fauss 30:21

Children Laughing

Missy Rentz 30:23

And what is the greatest gift that parks give to us?

Katrina Fauss 30:28

connections. So connections to people, connections to the place. It's about connections and community.

Missy Rentz 30:36

Katrina, I am so grateful to you for joining me today for teaching us about what you have going on at your park, but also just opening up the world of education and development in nature is just a beautiful thing. So thank you very much for taking the time,

Katrina Fauss 30:52

thank you for the opportunity. This really was, this was full of joy and wonder, just like how we met.

Missy Rentz 30:57

Yay. Thanks for listening to this episode. Until next time, we'll see you in the parks.

31:03

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today's episode, please be sure to like and share on your favorite podcast platform. Music for The Parks Podcast is performed and produced by Porter Hardy. For more information, please follow us at @TheParksPodcast, or visit our website at TheParksPodcast.com.