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The camp is but HartmanBy JIM V0LGAR1N0 Courier Staff WriterThe cabins are gone now, the victims of abuse and disrepair.The lodge remains, however, and a facelifting of the structure should bring it new life and a usefulness it probably hasn’t seen in the past 10 years.Hartman Reserve, an 80-acre tract located between Waterloo and Cedar Falls, is a place where many youngsters saw their first raccoon or sat around their first campfire.THOSE TIMES, when the YMCA operated a camp at the reserve, are gone now too, but the educational aspects of the reserve remain.The YMCA halted its camping operations several years ago. The programs each summer allowed a chance for many city dwellers to experience their only true link with the land.The late night campfire talks, complete with adult explanations of the surrounding forest and skies, gave many boys their •first'inkling of how nature works around them.A walk through the reserve now brings back memories of those camping days when impromptu baseball games were played in a lowland pasture and treasure hunts occurred every day as the campers searched for acorns and honey locust seed pods...trophies they could take home.THE RESERVE has been called the last sizeable tract of wilderness.left in Black Hawk County and with its designation as a wilderness it becomes even more true.While other county parks are used for recreational and picnic purposes in many cases, ' Hartman Reserve will remain primarily a nature study area.Things will remain natural here and it will be a place where mans mark won't be easily found. Nature will be allowed, for the;.most part, to prosper without man’s intervention.MARY DURITSA, the reserve’s manager, has a special interest in making it a ,4one..of a kind” natural area that goes far beyond seeing that things get done.On toilr along the reserve’s twisting trails, she- will point at budding puffballMary Duritsamushrooms which plume with greenish spores when poked.“See these.trees? she asks, pointing to the s^ark trunks of dead elms and oaks which reach forlornly to the sky. •“Even though they're dead, they’re beautiful.'*Though the forest has been plagued in recent years by disease, Duritsa say5 many of the dead trees will remain.“It would be bad to clear all of the dead trees,” she explains, “because they serve a purpose too.As if proving her point, a woodpecker appears overhead, pecking furiously on a dead trunk in search of an afternoon meal.“THERE ARE eight species of wood-. peckers down here arid they have to eat loo,” she say s.Much of the upland area at the reserve is marked with deep ravines.“Those ravines are what make this area unique to any other area in the county,” Duritsa says.The upland timber of oak, hickory, basswood and maple is beginning to stablize with most of the new trees being maple or basswood.Trails are being-revitalized. The ravines need some cleaning to rid them of: junk and piles of dead trees, but in many cases they will be left alone.'. THE RESERVE was acquired last, March from the YMCA by the coiinty-. conservation board for $277,300 when the YMCA found it could -rid longeVmaintamthe property and its camping usage had died out. ' - 'The lowlands, making up about half of the property, open a new vista for thevisitor.The forest is thinner, but the canary grass in some areas is head high and the poison ivy, a scourge which kept campers on the trails in previous years, is still there, bigger and denser then ever.Remodeling of the lodge will eventually provide an interpretive center to promote understanding of the reserve.It will include .a meeting hall with displays and exhibits of natural things related to the reserve.Former District Judge Blair Wood, whose property adjoins the reserve, says he nearly bought the land in 1935, but couldn't raise the 83,500 price.He says the old Commercial National Bank failed in Waterloo about 1933 and he heard the receiver of the bank was holding some property that was heavily• wooded.In 1936, after contacting the receiver, Wood got some people together to look at the property for possible purchase, but the deal never went through.“IN THE MEANTIME I had found five acres of land adjoining the property which 1 later bought for $300 and built a log cabin on,” he explains.But Wood’s interest in the property didn't die with his purchase.While attending a.Wildlife Federation meeting in Des Moines some time later, he told Max Miller»an executive officer of the YMCA, about the land.Miller became interested and on Jan. I, 1937, Wood and Miller took a walk through the property.“He was really enthusiastic about the land,” recalls Wood. “And later he approached Waterloo publisher John Hartman about purchasing the land for the Y, which Hartman later did.”The reserve that • Hartman gave the• . organization some 40 years ago has re-^mained basically, unchanged, somethingDuritsa would like to see continue.Though the camp is gone and the reserve will no .^onger'witness youthful .^baseball , games, itwill be for years to come brie of those special areas wherenature will be allowed to choose its own. .• •course.A warm winter afternoon provides the perfect setting for an excursion in the woods. Students from Cedar Heights school make their way along a trail, above, and stop briefly, right, to discuss the forest arond them with Hartman Reserve manager Mary Duritsa. Below, examination of a fungus found on a dead tree provides the students with some “in the field” experience.Courier photos by Humberto Ramirez
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