When Ben Grossman interviewed for his job with the St. Charles County Parks Department a decade ago, director Bettie Yahn-Kramer asked to see his hands.
"She wanted to know if I had the hands of someone who worked," Grossman said.
Grossman had just gotten his graduate degree at the time, and he needed to prove he had some experience in the field too. He passed the test.
As the county's natural resource supervisor, Grossman, 35, has been part of a team that's working to restore the county's wetlands, savannas and woodlands to what they would have looked like before European settlement.
"We're not your typical parks department," he said. "We don't have ballparks, swimming pools or athletic facilities."
The department's philosophy is known as passive recreation, and it's slowly changing the landscape of the park system.
Grossman has helped put in prairies and low-maintenance areas using native vegetation. He's led prescribed burns to help forests grow better, and he's battled invasive plants like honeysuckle.
One project has led to a return of bobwhite quail to the area. Special accommodations had to be made for the bumble-bee-size chicks. They needed a specific type of grass to be able to walk to get food and low-growing shrubs to escape from predators.
"It's great when I hear some of the other park supervisors tell me, 'Yesterday we jumped another covey of quail over the edge of the prairie,' " he said. "They're excited to hear and see wildlife that they didn't see before."
Grossman isn't sure where he got his love for the outdoors, but he said it probably developed when he was a child growing up in Anchorage, Alaska.
"My dad and I did a lot of outdoor stuff — hunting and fishing and camping — so I think that's who I got it from," he said.
When he was in high school, his family moved to central Illinois, and Grossman decided he wanted a career in forestry. He got his undergraduate degree at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and his graduate degree at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
A short time later he was in Yahn-Kramer's office.
Grossman's latest work has been developing a nature-based classroom for children at Towne Park, the county's newest, near Flint Hill off Highway 40/61, which will open this spring.
The 109 acres was the site of a former tobacco plantation and later was a dairy farm. It was the home of Betty Towne, who used to operate the Pink Plantation and Tea House.
Every Wednesday morning, Grossman meets at the park with volunteers from the Confluence Chapter of the Missouri Master Naturalists — a group that supports conservation efforts.
The "Nature Explore" classroom will feature 11 stations, like the nature art area, where children can use turtle shells, animal bones, seed pods and deer antler to make crafts.
A roofless log cabin will house a large sand box, and a water station will feature a pedal-powered pump that will bring in water from a nearby lake. The water will flow through a pipe, into a cedar trough and down a man-made river before it flows back into the lake.
"We'll probably put some river rock in, and kids can dam it up and see how water flows," Grossman said.
The classroom is the fifth of its kind in the St. Louis metro area. No admission will be charged.
On a recent work day, Grossman pointed out some elements he helped carve, including a totem pole and minimalist bench, known as a Leopold bench.
"Aldo Leopold was one of the early environmentalists, the father of wildlife conservation," he said. "It had to be a very simple design, so we built it out of cedar that we harvested off our property."
Leslie Limberg, president of the Master Naturalist group, talked about Grossman's leadership as she raked mulch around a sycamore stump.
"Ben has proven to us that he's not just a forester, and he's not just a parks employee; he has a huge life commitment to people and to nature," she said. "We couldn't ask for a better mentor really."
