The day was filled with educational breakout sessions on topics like spelunking and Ozark music history, while the evening found festival attendees scattered across a green field cut by a stream flowing from a cave at the back of the Illinois River Watershed Partnership’s property.
People spent the night resting on chairs and blankets, enjoying food truck cuisine and listening to the sounds of water paired with bluegrass music from local band Greenland Station. There was a sense of lingering anticipation as festival organizers had advertised the emergence of a colony of gray bats from Cave Springs cave to conclude the event.
Zoe Meggert and her family had just arrived at the festival as the music began. The food truck was their first destination, but she said Greenland Station was the main draw for her children.
“The kids were super excited because this is, like, technically their first concert,” Meggert said. “So we are going to grab some dinner, then go check out some tunes.”
Meggert lives in Cave Springs and said downtown organizations like the Illinois River Watershed Partnership, or IRWP, have spurred new activity in the community.
“We feel like both the watershed group and then Nelson's Hardware store both do a really good job of putting on events just in the downtown area, which is really nice, especially with the kids,” she said. “We're a young family, but it's nice just to see everybody come out and support and get really excited and behind this small town, which we really love.”
Cave Springs is a growing small town, as evidenced by Bats and Bluegrass’ substantial attendance—the event sold out a few days before it occurred despite being the first in many years.
Morgan Keeling is IRWP’s associate director. Before the festival, she said she felt fortunate that the partnership had found a place in a developing community like Cave Springs. Bats and Bluegrass would be her first time hosting a large-scale community event.
“It is going to be new for me to see,” Keeling said. “But I know Cave Springs, overall, is looking to really strengthen community events. Now that we have discussed Bats and Bluegrass with the city, for example, we're talking about potential other events coming down the pipeline that we can host at the sanctuary. So we're really excited about what all this could spark in Cave Springs, and it's changing, evolving. There was a Cave Springs downtown master planning charrette that was hosted by the Urban Land Institute. And we'll actually be talking through some of those results or findings from having the community come and redesign downtown Cave Springs. So, right now, it's just a really fun and exciting time for downtown Cave Springs, and we're so lucky to get to help make some of this happen.”
Of course, the IRWP does more than just host festivals. Bats and Bluegrass was a fundraiser for the partnership, helping organizers realize their mission of improving the integrity of the Illinois River through outreach and conservation.
“It would be great to have more overhead,” stewardship apprentice Sarah Alvey said. “As a nonprofit, that's like your insurance, having larger overhead.”
Her title is stewardship apprentice for the watershed partnership, but she said that can mean many things.
“You know, that could also be sanctuary maintenance—odds and ends kind of jobs—because everybody has their projects,” Alvey said. “And I’ve kind of been helping with the etcs and a lot of Bats and Bluegrass.”
Alvey said the partnership receives most of its funding from grants or other forms of monetary support that have certain limitations. Donations gathered during an event like Bats and Bluegrass come with no strings attached.
“It gives you more creative space to maybe put back more into the park or, you know, run more volunteer events for cleanups in the river,” she said. “But, yeah, because running a cleanup—it doesn't take a lot of money, but you still have to buy trash supplies, you still have to facilitate, and somebody's hours are allocated to overhead because that's not under a specific project. So this kind of money definitely helps us be able to go out and do more impactful initiatives like that.”
Morgan Keeling said this event allows them to not only gather donations but also further integrate the partnership with its community.
“A lot of our work is hyper-focused, tunnel-visioned on water quality, and we have great partners that work in that space,” Keeling said. “But this allows us to really rub elbows with our neighbors, like Joyhouse, like Evergreen Heart—which is right down next to our learning center—Cave Springs Dental, Pavecon, and POST Pediatrics are some Cave Springs businesses that we're really excited are involved in this this year. So that's one thing, and then also, there's so many people who might go, ‘Hey, bluegrass. I don't know about the bats, but I'm down for bluegrass.’ And then they come and hopefully they take something away, and their children, especially, it's very geared toward the youth having a great, immersive and educational experience.”
IRWP staff hosted these educational activities with help from collaborators from around the region. Keeling led a nature journaling session, and Matthew Amaya of Springdale attended the workshop. He said the experience was deeper than simply describing your environment.
“It's more than just going out and drawing to scale what it is that you're seeing,” Amaya said. “It's a mixture of not only drawing what you see in nature but also taking inspiration from it and reflecting that in your drawings. So just kind of doing your own spin on nature with that.”
He said Keeling encouraged them to think of a flower or plant, draw it from memory, and then personalize the depiction. Amaya said he hadn’t practiced something like that before.
“I'd never really thought about nature journalism outside of just documenting the straight facts,” he said. “I'd never thought about putting, sort of, your own spin on it before. So getting to do that—getting to have some artistic license with nature was something I'd never really considered. So, it was a nice thing to think about, and also a little bit about poetry going along with the nature documentary. So I’m not much of a poet, but she, the woman who gave us the course, talked about how, for inspiration, she'll think of the past, present and future of the thing and then write a poem based off of that. So just sort of a nice template to go off of.”
The night ended when the sun set. A few bats were visible to the naked eye, but there wasn’t a grand emergence. However, people didn’t seem to mind. Many walked back to their cars, smiling. Plus, the bats ended up coming out, although we didn’t see it. The partnership posted a night vision recording, and after viewing, it’s certain they made an appearance—even if it was only made known at the time by a lack of mosquitos.
You can help the Illinois River Watershed Partnership host more events like Bats and Bluegrass and continue its mission of conserving the Illinois River. Visit their website for more information.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. The authoritative record of KUAF programming is the audio record.
