The Great Log Roll-Off

Week of April 5, 2026 – April 11, 2026

by Katie McLaughlin, Environmental Educator

The Great Log Roll-Off is a spring camp tradition. Camp groups explore the preserve and participate in some data collection by flipping over logs and counting everything they see.

What can be found under a log? Multiple Arthropoda such as millipedes and centipedes, ants and beetles, or even spiders. Or Gastropods (their name means stomach foot – weird right?) like snails and slugs. Or what really catches most of the campers’ eyes – the vertebrates like salamanders or the occasional small mammal. 

While this year’s Great Log Roll-off was the earliest in our records, the campers still found plenty of animals under the logs. The entire camp found 1,197 things that count as points during the two hours of searching, with over 40 salamanders and my group even startled a mouse under a log!

This annual event for our spring campers is one of my favorites that we do. Kids are already looking for life under the logs and with this competition and guidance from our staff, they discover even more than they were originally finding on their own. Campers learn to spend the time to really look at everything under the logs, not just the big colorful millipedes or the red backed salamanders, but the signs of mammals or the smallest of snails that blend into the ground.

This searching for life also has some additional mindfulness for the preserve. As we are quickly approaching spring ephemeral season, staff are pointing out flowers just starting to pop out of the ground. Rolling logs can disturb the soil around them, so teaching campers to be mindful of where they are checking and then remembering to put the logs back – it’s a penalty if you don’t! –  is a big part of keeping the preserve healthy so we can continue to search for where these creatures are living!

At the end of the day groups are excited to share what we found out there. We tally up our scores with excitement as we find out who won that year (Spoiler. It was my team this year with 1,820 points.) We celebrate all the teams’ finds and every camper goes home with stories of all the critters they found, some stories of other groups having a mouse jump over a log and we all screamed, and all looking forward to next season when we do it again!

We invite our members to enjoy a weekly blog written by our naturalists. Every blog will be uniquely different but always inspired by nature. We may share a memory from a recent hike at The Woods or teach you about an animal or plant that lives on the preserve. No matter the topic, we will be sharing with you our passion for nature and celebrating the connections we all have to the natural world. Each blog will be connected to a weekly set of activities and ideas to help you put nature in your hands, even if you’re at home!