Tri-Chapter Bunker Hill Retreat
September 5-7, 2025
by Eileen Kinsella, Class of 2021
The Tri-Chapter Bunker Hill Retreat, located in Mountain View, Missouri, on the Jacks Fork River was an amazing weekend with perfect weather. Organized by Janis Schweitzerof the Miriamiguoa Chapter, along with fellow Great Rivers Chapter members, the gathering offered opportunities for volunteer service (VS), advanced training (AT), group socials and personal time. Participants stayed in cozy cabins for 2, 4 or 8 guests either on the river bank or across the road in view of the river.
Friday evening and Saturday lunch were pot luck, with family style meals in the dining hall for breakfast Saturday and Sunday and Saturday dinner. Miramiguoa Chapter provided pack and go lunch items for the Sunday VS float trip trash removal group. Evening campfires on the beach visiting and mingling, closed out each day.
Great Rivers chapter members Barb Cerutti, Eileen Kinsella and Sherri Turner organized VS to collect and install native plants in garden beds around the retreat center, with members from all three chapters contributing plants and installing them in the various gardens. Barb and Sherri got the gardens started last year, so this year’s service project involved weeding and refreshing with a few new spots added.
Other optional scheduled activities over the weekend included:
AT wildflower walk with Leslie Penning, Miramiguoa Chapter
AT birding with Janis Schweitzer, Miramiguoa Chapter
AT training to assess/build a trail with Rick Schweitzer, Miramiguoa Chapter
VS trail building with Kathie Brennan, Ozark Trail Association (OTA)
AT training on kayak safety with a VS kayak and canoe river float with Missouri Clean Stream to collect trash along the way, Perry Whitaker, Miramiguoa Chapter
AT presentation on Ozark plants with Linda Williams, Springfield Plateau Chapter
Emergency Preparedness/First Aid with Perry Whitaker, Miramiguoa Chapter member
Creating a Wildlife Rich and Deer Resistant Native Plant Garden, a presentation by Nancy Newcomer, Confluence Chapter President, detailing the multi year project creating a native plant garden at the Rockwoods Reservation Visitor Center using deer resistant plants and implementing a side by side approach to sharing habitat. The garden is for public education and enjoyment.
A really fun hands-on /Get Wet Water Quality Monitoring session on the Jacks Fork river bank using water critter identification with Besa Schweitzer and Katie Franke, Miramiguoa Chapter members.
The LAD foundation offered a dynamic and thoroughly engaging AT with Sophie Krautmann, Recreation and Outreach Coordinator with the LAD Foundation, explaining the history of the LAD foundation land acquisition through a donation by founder Leo A. Drey. Drey, a visionary ecologist, pioneered methods of sustainable forestry and conservation practices in the Ozark forests, conserving some virgin pine forest that would have been harvested long ago. Sophie offered an educational activity with the group as a living forest, each of us holding an open umbrella representing a tree of a certain species, age, and health to illustrate sustainable forestry concepts. It was wonderful to learn with a kinetic, spatial activity! Cindy Neu, Great Rivers Chapter Education Committee Chair, noted that this activity would be great for future education programs.
NOTE: The next Tri Chapter Bunker Hill Retreat is planned for the Spring of 2027 since the Missouri State Master Naturalists Conference will be hosted by the St Louis Area Missouri Master Naturalists in June 2026. 2027 will be the 20th anniversary of the MMN Great Rivers Chapter! St Louis Area MMN launched in 2005 with the formation of the Confluence Chapter. In 2007, the Great Rivers Chapter formed due to the growth in membership of the Confluence Chapter.
In 2009, the Miramiguoa Chapter formed to serve the Franklin County area.