Man, you know when you’re eating lunch at a rest stop and you get up to follow a raccoon, and he goes through this doorway standing in the middle of nowhere, and then BOOM! Eye of Horus! and then the door disappears and a batty old lady shows up to tell you about seagulls and pickleweed? If you do, this video — soldered together out of clips from the “Tripping With Terwilliger” nature films — will make you feel like someone really gets you. If you don’t, though, it’s still phenomenally awesome. I like the part where she yells at clams.
To be honest this is a really amazing way to teach kids about nature, by actually having them poke it and pick it up and put it in their mouths. And Mrs. Terwilliger seems like a sort of a cross between Mark Trail and Mrs. Frizzle from the Magic Schoolbus books, which is delightful. I’m not sure you could make a nature show today where kids play in manure, and maybe that’s not an improvement.
