A drone image of Topsham’s Cathance Preserve Heath Fen. Jan Smith photo

One way of looking at, or down from, a flying drone is simply to imagine that you are 200 feet tall, with telescopic eyes. Fearsome creature, you. Some mix, perhaps, of sky and land god.

I mention this possibility not as celebration of you — or me — but as a prod to our imaginations. This musing is brought on by some photographs of Topsham’s Cathance Preserve Heath Fen taken and shared by resident Jan Smith. As a certified drone pilot, Smith has added this way of apprehending his local world to the usual foot-won way.

A while ago, Smith told me, he found himself drawn by seeming anomaly in the Heath: “What’s that dark patch?” Smith wondered. The splotch nestled next to some trees and reached a bit into the wetland adjacent. “I don’t see it replicated anywhere else,” he said. “I’ll have to ask.”

Who do you go to with such a question, I asked Smith. “Here,” he said, “is a best resource,” and he introduced me to the work and world of Dr. Fred Cichocki, Maine Master Naturalist and tutor to those who ask such questions. Cichocki can tell you just what that is, underfoot, or under eye.

All of this plays as background in my mind as I walk a root-striated trail down to the Heath Fen near the middle of the Cathance River Nature Preserve. On this chill, late October day I’m here for a “field trip.” In it lies the promise of on-the-ground sleuthing by three of Rebecca Norklun’s Mt. Ararat sophomore Advanced Biology students, Josh, Nolan and Miles, as they are led by “Doc Fred.”

“So,” says Cichocki as we reach the edge of the wetland, “this is a fen not a bog. A fen has water flowing through, while a bog sits inert, and that fen water will have more minerals than that in a bog. That will foster more life.” Cichocki suggests seeing this fen as a slightly tipped bowl, and the students’ task as we circumnavigate it today is to take a series of measurements that will help reveal this tilt.

Later, the students will take their 10 readings and plot them on a map as part of a report they will write for Norklun. This is the seventh of eight field visits to the fen. (Note: students in this Advanced Biology will present their work to the public during February at the Topsham Public Library.)

It’s familiar ground for Cichocki; this is the sixth year that Cichocki and students have measured the vascular diversity of the Heath. We reach measurement point No. 1, and Cichocki pauses for a bit to describe how the plant life grows in zones as it moves out into the fen on its sphagnum mat base. He points to bluestem grass and then, scattered father out, the distinctive clusters of cotton sedge, tufted by its namesake cotton.

Then, he fires up the GPS and hands it to Josh, who takes it out into the fen’s edge and reads off location coordinates, elevation and range of elevation, while Nolan records them. Nine points to go.

Our progress around the fen is a mix of trail-finding and bushwhacking; always, we stay close to the marshy moat of water that describes its edge. Cichocki locates points 2, 3, 4, 5 and on. In a few spots he takes out another instrument and the students measure also the pH of the water. Its acidity often determines what grows where.

And then this repeated measuring occasions also what teachers learn to wait for: “Hey,” says Miles, “I wonder what the pH of the water is over there?” He points to the gouge of an old quarry (likely for feldspar, Cichocki reckons). “Here’s the pH meter,” says Cichocki, and the students take it over to the dark water.

Cichocki and I watch. Miles plunges a long stick in. “Whoa,” he says, “I can’t reach the bottom. They toss in a rock or two. Then, they take a reading. Even as the quarry is linked to the fen by a trickle of water, its pH is tenfold higher. “Why is that?” they ask aloud.

Here, I think to myself, is paydirt, or paywater. A real question, born not of assignment or duty, but of curiosity. Cichocki knows not to interrupt, even as we are now likely to be behind schedule. All the lead-in work of seeing from on high, being assigned tasks, walking and walking and measuring is necessary. But this moment of curiosity is what teachers hope and work for. It can be the core of how we learn, what we carry forward, and, finally, who we become.

I have, I realize on my way home, followed again my own path of curiosity, first seeded by Smith’s aerial photos, then brought down to earth by Rebecca Norklun’s class field trips and research, and finally brought to life by Josh and Nolan and Miles and “Doc Fred” Cichocki.

Sandy Stott is a Brunswick resident, chair of the town’s Conservation Commission, chair also of The Mere Brook Steering Committee, and a member of Brunswick Topsham Land Trust’s board of directors. He writes for a variety of publications. He may be reached at fsandystott@gmail.com.