ISSUE #37


The Outdoor Insider

MAINE OUTDOOR SCHOOL'S QUARTERLY E-NEWSLETTER

Hancock Grammar School Kindergarten Class, Photo Credit: Jane Parlee of Frenchman Bay Conservancy

ISSUE #37
January 2026

“We had a great time in the woods with Maine Outdoor School this year! It was fun sitting in the woods having lessons and learning to appreciate what our planet does for us (ecosystem services). We also had fun playing games that supported and reinforced the concepts being taught. Our guide from MOS was very knowledgeable and seemed to enjoy being with us.
The kiddos loved it!”  

-Peninsula School 4th Grade teacher, December 2025

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Tracks:

How did MOS leave its mark this quarter?

Orienteering Program for IDEA Homeschoolers

Dear Teacher Workshop participant

Mountain View School Kindergarten class field trip

O.W.L. Outing Club hike

  • Celebrated our 10th year in business with a party at The Gatherings in Surry.

  • Continued our regular program series at 14 public schools.

  • Took guests of Terramor Outdoor Resort stargazing and learning about nocturnal adaptations through programs designed especially for them. 

  • Provided a short  Map & Compass skills workshop with Women for Healthy Rural Living.

  • Identified trees with Out in the Open and Frenchman Bay Conservancy at an LGBTQ+ community-building outing.

  • Led OWL (Outdoor Women Lead) Outings for women: Foraging at Klondike Mountain, learning about unique organisms at Backfield Park on Great Wass Island, and winter survival at the Frenchman Bay Community Forest in Hancock. 

  • Held more programs for IDEA Homeschoolers including orienteering and fungi, moss, and lichen ID

  • MOS CEO Hazel taught teacher workshops at this year’s Dear Teacher Conference with Island Readers and Writers and Harvest of Ideas with Washington County Education Consortium.

  • Welcomed 2026 at our annual New Year’s Eve hike with Crabtree Neck Land Trust.

    Thank you all for a wonderful 2025! You can read our Year in Review here.

Check out the “MOS in the News” page to see where we’ve shown up in the press!

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Community Commendations:

Photo: Spring 2025 programming with Miles Lane School thanks to GPMCT!

This quarter’s Community Commendation goes to Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust (GPMCT) which has been making MOS programming available for free to Bucksport 4th and 5th-graders this year! GPMCT is a land trust located in Northwestern Hancock County, including the towns of Bucksport, Orland, Verona Island, Dedham, and Lucerne. 

Thanks to our collaboration with GPMCT, we are providing standards-aligned outdoor program series  to the four 4th-grade classes at Miles Lane School and the two 5th-grade classes at Bucksport Middle School. Each class gets a series of programs in their schoolyard and trails and a field trip to a GPMCT preserve.

This year’s 5th-grade classes were enthusiastic to have additional outdoor school programming after having had a field trip with MOS to GPMCT’s Wildlands last year. They have been learning about plant characteristics and how to identify local tree species through nature journaling. 

Thanks to GPMCT, we look forward to more programming with Bucksport Schools next school year!

Biomimicry:

The harlequin duck takes being active in the winter to a whole new level.
During the breeding season, these ducks prefer whitewater sections of mountain streams and rivers in western Canada and the very northwest corner of the US or in northeastern Canada and Greenland; come the winter nonbreeding season, they move to rocky coastlines with similarly turbulent water. On winter nights, they simply go a little farther away from shore to be able to roost on the open ocean.

These ostentatious ducks prefer living in places where fast-moving water is getting slammed against rocks, where they regularly walk on slippery rocks and dive underwater as far as seventy feet for nearly a minute in order to eat the sharpest of aquatic foods.

So the next time you need to bring some joy into the winter darkness, you could head to the rocky coast to seek a group of harlequin ducks. The coast of Maine, in fact, holds more than half their entire eastern population in the winter. Penobscot Bay, Jericho Bay, and Schoodic Point are the likeliest places to find them. We know that their winter populations are much smaller than they used to be, but because most of their range is in remote northern areas that aren’t surveyed, scientists don’t know why. But given their love for whitewater, you can imagine that dams or anything else that slows rivers down, covering their prey in silt, would make life harder for a harlequin. So this is yet another reminder to take care of your local watershed.


This edition of Biomimicry is an adaptation of an episode of The Nature of Phenology, a radio show that MOS Co-Founders Hazel and Joe produced weekly for WERU-FM from 2018-2024. You can read or listen to entire past episodes here.

 

Resilience Tip:
Getting outside in the cold has lots of physical and mental health benefits, but it can also lead to dry skin. Be sure to keep your hands, feet, and face protected in the cold air and stay hydrated. For more tips to protect your skin, read here.

 

What's Upstream: 

  • Expect more school programming! We’ll be adding on at least 3 more schools this winter, as well as continuing our other series.

  • Join an OWL (Outdoor Women Lead) Outing including: learning about winter birds at Birch Point in Steuben (1/24), winter adaptations at Grand Lake Stream (2/28), and field vs. forest at the Ball Field Preserve in Hancock (3/21)

  • Apply for Summit for a Cause 2026 with Women for Healthy Rural Living and hike Katahdin with MOS. (Application opens in January)

  • Stay active this winter! We continue to provide private experiences led by our Registered Maine Guides and can take you and a group of your family and friends on an outing completely customized to your interests and abilities.

  • Expect regular homeschooling programs with IDEA in partnership with Maine Coast Heritage Trust to continue this spring. 

ALL MOS PROGRAMS ARE FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE AND SUIT EXPLORERS OF ANY AGE. 

VISIT OUR WEBSITE FOR IDEAS OR CONTACT US TO SCHEDULE YOUR UNIQUE EXPERIENCE.