Come, Touch the Earth: 30 years of Volunteer Dedication at Touch the Earth Natural Area
By Kate Hammel, Communications Director
For thirty years, the trails at Touch the Earth Natural Area have been kept open thanks to the steady volunteer support of the Weisner family. Their house overlooking the preserve looks like a small castle built of Indiana limestone, surrounded by lovingly nurtured native plants and the butterflies they attract.
Touch the Earth Natural Area, Photo by John Lawrence
Since Touch the Earth was acquired in 1995, Kurt and Lisa Weisner and their children have been gracious caretakers of the nature preserve, mowing the paths season after season. Their generosity has helped shape Touch the Earth into a community treasure, offering a lasting refuge for nature and the surrounding community. These trails carry forward a legacy of stewardship, helping to ensure that future generations will have the chance to walk these same paths, learning to love the land and carry forward the work of protecting it.
The story of Touch the Earth Natural Area began in 1995 with another act of generosity, when Terry and Connie Marbach made a significant donation through their Namaste Foundation to enable Sycamore Land Trust to purchase 68 acres of rolling hills west of Columbus. At the time, Sycamore was just five years old and still an all-volunteer organization. Terry recalls driving by the property, with its recently farmed fields, open grassy fields, woods, and intermittent streams, and worrying it might someday be developed. Rather than let that happen, he and Connie reached out to Sycamore and offered their help to permanently protect it, setting in motion over three decades of community care.
This would become Sycamore’s fourth preserve and its first outside of Monroe County. Volunteers got to work almost immediately to bring the Marbachs’ vision for the property to life. Ed Schools, the President of Sycamore Land Trust’s Board of Directors, circulated a letter of introduction to neighbors sharing initial plans for signs, a small off-road parking area for the safety of visitors, and a walking trail to be used as an outdoor classroom. They also planned to complete ecosystem restoration work in the recently farmed fields. David Beery volunteered to steward the land and monitor its use, and the Weisner family, eager to be good neighbors, generously helped mow the trails and care for them.
Neighbors Lisa and Kurt Weisner and their family have been gracious caretakers of Touch the Earth Natural Area since it was acquired in 1995. Photo courtesy of “She Magazine”
The first official nature walk was held on August 12, 1995, with opening remarks by Terry Marbach. “When you and I are gone,” he said, “Touch the Earth Natural Area will still be here, providing a place where nature can pass through its natural cycle undisturbed. An area free from the intrusion of blacktop, malls, billboards, and nightlights where the sycamore can grow untouched, the hawks can soar far and wide (hope you can see the wonderful one who lives here), the deer can graze at leisure, and the wildflowers can delight us with their blooms.
“It is our strong hope that as nature moves at its own pace in this area, the public will come to hike, birdwatch, photograph, contemplate, and study and in so doing be educated and refreshed by what it sees, hears, and smells…”
In 1996, Sycamore received a $1,000 grant from the Hazel Teegarden Foundation to build bridges and a welcome sign, with the remaining funds dedicated to stewardship. Lise Schools, working with her young daughter Molly on her back in a Snuggly carrier, designed the original trail and helped to build it. On July 12, 1996, volunteers gathered for a workday to build three bridges that would enable visitors to cross into new areas of the preserve.
By early 1997, Touch the Earth had already become a haven for wildlife. Naturalist and columnist for The Republic Hellen Ochs, known as “The Bird Lady,” described seeing more cardinals there than anywhere she had ever birded, along with a rich mix of other songbirds. She reported that Kurt and Lisa Weisner were beginning a bluebird trail, placing nest boxes to encourage cavity-nesting birds. Lisa proposed planting wildflowers on the preserve and recognized that the area was already a fall congregation site for migrating butterflies.
That same year, with help from the Indianapolis Power & Light Co., Sycamore hired a consulting forester to plant 8,300 native hardwood tree seedlings across 10.7 acres of the preserve. Twenty volunteers, including the Marbachs and the Weisners, planted an additional 800 seedlings by hand. Red oak, black gum, black walnut, green ash, and persimmon were selected to shade out invasive shrubs and restore the preserve’s native forests. Soon after, generous community donors including Namaste Foundation enabled Sycamore to purchase an additional 30 acres, expanding the preserve to 98 acres. Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts built kiosks, benches, and bridges. Volunteers returned year after year for invasive plant removal workdays, removing garlic mustard and cutting back aggressive plants to give native species a chance to thrive.
An ecology class at Columbus North High School visits Touch the Earth Natural Area in 2000 for its second stewardship workday.
Touch the Earth also became a place where citizen science can aid in the land’s recovery. It is part of the Indiana Phenology Trail network, where volunteers can record the timing of leaf-out, flowering, and fruiting to help researchers track and better understand how nature is changing.
In March 2022, the Marbachs generously donated an additional 10 acres to expand the preserve to 109 acres, gifting Sycamore a thriving native wildflower meadow they had been restoring for years. Terry remembers the thrill of finding an American woodcock nest with eggs in the grass while walking the property, proof that this preserve protects vital habitat for sensitive species.
In 1995, Board President Ed Schools accepted a donation of the first 70 acres of land from Connie and Terry Marbach, to be named “Touch the Earth.”
“From the beginning of time until the early 1800s, this land “belonged” to no one. Now 176 years after it was first surveyed, this land once again belongs to no one. Rather, it is for the use of all. We can all watch together as nature reverts towards its natural state as it overcomes the intrusions made by man. Fortunately, there have been a limited number of such intrusions on this acreage.
We hope that the example of Touch the Earth will encourage others … to work with Sycamore Land Trust to preserve such areas for the use of our and future generations.
This is attributed to a gentleman named George Trevelyan: ‘A man and what he loves and builds have but a day and then disappear. Nature cares not and renews the annual round untired.’ Keep renewing, Mother Nature.”
—Terry Marbach, in opening remarks to welcome the first guided nature hike at Touch the Earth Natural Area on August 12, 1995
At Touch the Earth, hikers learn about the area’s unique geological history surrounded in wildflowers and butterflies and birders scan the meadows for rare species like prairie warblers that depend on its early successional forest habitat. These moments are only possible because of the trail that winds through the preserve, which was envisioned, built, and maintained by volunteers who are woven into the fabric of this preserve’s history and ongoing care.
The Weisners’ mower still hums across its meadows and through its emerging forests, just as it has for thirty years, ensuring that this special place remains open to all. In doing so, they embody the spirit of stewardship that defines Touch the Earth Natural Area: neighbors, friends, and volunteers working together so that everyone can step onto the trail, reconnect with the land, and touch the earth.
This article is from the Summer 2025 issue of The Twig, “The Volunteer Issue.” Read the issue at sycamorelandtrust.org/twig.
