Belle Isle Winterfest celebrates season

Detroit — Winterfest at the Belle Isle Nature Center on Saturday offered families different activities than the traditional sledding, skating and skiing.

Center Director Amy Greene called the festival a "celebration of winter nature," one that was enhanced by freezing temperatures.

"We want to help people recognize that ... nature is not inaccessible, gone, dead, dormant in the winter, it's just different," Green said. "And so we're here to celebrate things you can do in the wintertime."

Winterfest attracted about 600 people Saturday afternoon. Dozens participated in a one-mile snowshoe hike to the Livingstone Memorial Lighthouse and back with Ryan Vance, supervisor of Belle Island Nature Center, and other educators at the center.

"If you're lucky, we might see a kestrel, other birds and just the beautiful landscape along the way," Vance said.

Christina Lewis, 39, brought her five children to Winterfest from Ann Arbor and the family was eager to try snowshoeing for the first time.

"We wanted to go, I saw that they were going to have the snowshoes and the different crafts and activities," Lewis said. "It's good to do something else besides just sledding and tubing ... something different because my kids have never done this before."

Lewis' children were sold by the hot chocolate and s'mores-making station at Winterfest, she said. Snow painting in addition to indoor arts and crafts like ice crystal painting and snowflake making were very popular, as well as the center's various urban wildlife exhibits.

The nature center reopened this fall after undergoing a $2.5 million renovation. Winterfest is just one part of the center's winter programs, Greene said. It also offers additional educational opportunities like themed hikes every week, which can be found online.

Detroit native Terri Burch brought her 17-month-old daughter and 2-year-old son to the nature center for the first time on Saturday.

"We've been wanting to come I pass it by all the time ... and I saw there was a Winterfest today," Burch said. "I'm always looking for something for the tots, the little ones to get into."

Dave Coden, 49, brought his sons Harlan and Maurice, ages 4 and 2, to the nature center without knowing Winterfest would be happening.

"We just were looking for something to do and it was too cold to go sledding so I brought them here," Coden said. "Now that it's open it I think of it in the back of my mind and we come out when we can."

Others, like 40-year-old Southgate mom Katie Kontzal, are regular patrons of the center. Kontzal said her 7- and 8-year-old children have been to the center several times since its reopening.

"We do enjoy it here so when we saw Winterfest was happening we were like 'oh let's go up here and see,'" Kontzal said. "We like being outside year-round. ... I am excited that they do have things like that."

Representatives from the Nature Center's partner groups like the Detroit Zoo and Detroit Outdoors had tables set up at the event.

Detroit Outdoors is a collaboration that helps young Detroiters experience nature and camping. Detroit native Uriel Llanas, 21, participated in the group's Bold and Gold program as a teenager and was encouraging others at the event to sign up. Llanas is now the Bold and Gold program coordinator.

"I didn't have really much outdoor access growing up in Detroit and the program provided me a chance to try camping and backpacking my entire life, something that I'd been wanting to do my entire life," Llanas said.

hmackay@deroitnews.com