It’s Wild! Wild Lights highlights new winter season at The Wild Center

By Rich Rosentreter

There is a new light show attraction at The Wild Center and it’s appropriately called Wild Lights as the museum continues its efforts to provide outdoor activities not only during the COVID-19 pandemic, but throughout the winter season as well.

The latest addition to The Wild Center’s entertaining arsenal is geared to brighten up spirits, not only during the holiday season, as the Wild Lights will be open Fridays and Saturdays from 5 to 7 p.m. every weekend from now until the end of March and each day during holiday vacation week December 26 to January 2 and February 12 through February 20, according to the center’s Marketing Manager Nick Gunn, who also shed more light on the attraction.

“Basically what we’ve done is taken Wild Walk and the Forest Music Loop Trail, which is a quarter-mile trail and has speakers throughout, and we’ve taken what we’ve calculated to be over 50,000 lights and strung them throughout campus to provide this really neat, evening experience,” he told the Free Press. “We are inviting families to come check it out. We think it will be a fun, safe thing for people to do during the winter. It’s a really neat experience in the woods with the music and lights.”

“We’ve commissioned a new five-song instrumental piece for that music trail, specifically for Wild Lights, and it’s cool – you get a little bit of Charlie Brown Christmas, a little bit of other stuff, it’s a really nice backdrop to create this cool winter wonderland out there,” Mr. Gunn added. “It’s fun, I think. Hopefully it begins a new tradition for families in the area.”

Mr. Gunn said that the museum has effectively utilized its resources to construct the new feature as the coronavirus has forced them to think creatively.

“The interesting part of the whole pandemic is that in keeping the indoor exhibits closed, it forced us to look at what The Wild Center already has and what we can change a little bit to provide a difference experience and still being safe,” he said, adding that so far, the public appears to enjoy the light show as the opening days of December 11 and 12 both sold out.

“It’s been fantastic,” Mr. Gunn said. “The feedback from people who visited was overwhelmingly positive. We got a lot of great feedback in person from people saying how much they enjoyed it with their families, and a lot of great comments on social media as well, all from people who appreciate having something nice to do outside. It was very rewarding for sure.”

The Wild Center Staff put lots of effort into creating the winter attraction, according to the marketing man, and getting feedback that confirms the public’s enjoyment has been “very satisfying.”

“We put in a lot of planning beforehand and lot of legwork to string lights and get ready to make sure people would have a great experience,” he said. “When folks were actually on-site and we were finally getting that positive feedback, that’s the most rewarding aspect about this. It makes the whole planning and effort totally worth it. When you go out there and you see families taking pictures and enjoying themselves and saying how much fun their having – last weekend was really, really great.”

COVID-19 precautions are still being followed at the center, he said.

“We are still limiting capacity to keep people spread out and reservations are required before visiting so that helps us manage the flow of traffic,” he said, adding that masks and social distancing are also mandatory. There are also hand-sanitizing stations throughout the facility. “We are maintaining what we did over the summer, which was really successful in terms of people feeling safe. We are doing more of the same in the winter.”

Other winter attractions

The Wild Lights is not the only addition to the winter lineup at the center, as there are other features even before 5 p.m. when Wild Lights starts, he said.

“There’s a lot of new attractions throughout the day, he said. “We have a lot of new things on Wild Walk.”

There are snow ball ranges that have targets for people to throw snowballs at and targets all along the trails walk as well as a few different photos opportunities along the way.

“We are doing not only free snowshoe rentals, but also kick sleds. We just got a bunch of new kick sleds in, and I had no idea what a kick sled was before this winter. It’s very popular in Nordic countries and I think that’s going to be fun for families to try, and we have the new outdoor animal viewing spaces,” he said, adding that the hope is to have those available all day. “We’ve created new spaces. The fun part about those animal viewing areas is that our outdoor otter play yard, that we experimented with in the summer and had a great reaction, but now in the winter is almost more fun because the otters actually run and slide on the snow. It’s a totally new, fun thing for people to see while they’re out there.”

There is also a “build a snow fort” area and as soon as the pond is frozen ice-fishing will begin.

“We’re just waiting for it to be safe to go out there and then we’ll start some safe, socially distancing ice-fishing demonstrations and people can try that as well,” he said.

The Wild Center has always operated with winter hours, but the Wild Walk would typically close during the fall around the end of October or early November, the staff member said.

“The new thing is that we’ve never done the evening hours,” he added. “Although we’ve been open winters, this winter looks a lot different.”

How it happened

The development of winter attractions at the center happened in part because of the pandemic but also follows the mission of the museum, Mr. Gunn said.

“It was really important to us, working in the atmosphere in which we’re working in right now, to be able to provide a fun, safe experience for families in the area,” he explained. “We’ve always had this idea to do something with lights on campus and it was always in our files somewhere and this year provided an opportunity for us to dust that file off, rethink it and how we could do it, and just because we’re outdoor only and we still want people to come to The Wild Center and make memories and enjoy themselves, now is an opportune time to actually do that.”

“So that was the impetus behind all of this was being able to do something safe and fun and outside and use everything that we have already, just putting a little different spin on it. That was the whole idea behind Wild Lights and the new winter experiences.”

Having additional attractions during the winter months not only excited guests, but has uplifted the staff at The Wild Center as well, according to Mr. Gunn.

“We had our first re-cap meeting on Saturday, and the energy of the staff was really evident. To be able to be a part of something new and exciting that is going to be around for a really long time and something we are expecting families in this area to make like a new tradition and come back year after year is the really exciting and rewarding part,” he said. “It’s funny, everybody has a little extra pep in their step for the last couple of weeks, for sure, just being able to be a part of something that we’re proud of and that we think people are going to enjoy, and after last weekend, it’s kind of panned out that people are loving it.”

Despite the pandemic and keeping things in proper perspective, Nick said The Wild Center had a good overall year.

“A large number of people came through to visit since we re-opened in July. Visitation has been good, people’s experiences have been really good. We did post-visit surveys and customer satisfaction and feeling of safety both rated very high, so that’s great,” he said, adding that although the museum has been operating in the red during the past few months, the focus remains on its positive attributes. “We have been losing money, but in terms of people visiting and enjoying themselves and us delivering on The Wild Center mission of providing the type of experience that people know and love, that was off the charts – as far as that goes we couldn’t have asked for a better year. Now we’ll continue to try to make up that gap the best we can. We’re still committed to staying open and providing that experience. Overall it’s been a great year, all things considered.”

Back in July when the museum first re-opened, no one at The Wild Center could predict if people would still visit and, perhaps even more importantly, accept the restrictions and safety precautions put in place.

“We had no idea what to expect. We were asking people to wear masks,” he said. “The response has been overwhelmingly positive. I can’t think of one single issue that we had since we reopened. People have been really respectful and everyone is enjoying themselves. In terms of safety and people adhering to the guidelines that we put in, it’s been great. It was a relief. To have people overwhelmingly respectful was nice to see.”

Community-oriented

According to Mr. Gunn, having The Wild Center open through the pandemic and beyond is vital both to the museum and community.

“The idea from the very onset of COVID in March was that The Wild Center still committed to our community as a whole, not only to staff and volunteers and members, but also to the Tupper Lake community,” he said. “We know what Tupper Lake looks like when we’re open in the summer when we’re getting 600-700 people in a day and what that means for the surrounding community, whether it’s people spending money on lunch or Park St. to buy a souvenir, so I think being able to stay open and operational and provide something, whether it’s locals or visitors, with something to do in Tupper Lake, that was really important to us. So being able to do that successfully over the summer and now to provide something else in the winter, that was our most important thing when planning out our year.”

“Whether it was back in July or Wild Lights right now we’re excited to get people to visit and spend more time in Tupper Lake,” he said, adding that one successful local promotion has been offering free admission for students and their families. “People have been very appreciative of that. It’s been tough for families over the past eight months, but in particular the last four to six weeks of having kids in school and then remote, going back and forth, we wanted to be able to provide something fun and educational for those families to do. Those free passes for Tupper Lake students have been successful. Parents have been appreciative to be able to get out of the house.”

The student promotion will continue through January 2.

“We hope that people come out and take advantage of that,” he said.

Gunn said he hopes that word will spread of all the expanded winter attractions – whether it be word of mouth or through posting photos and comments on social media.

“We just hope that families in Tupper Lake come out whether they’ve been to The Wild Center before or it’s they’re first time, we think that this new experience is like nothing that we’ve done before,” he said. “I think that now is the perfect time to come and visit.”

For reservations, call 359-7800. For more information on The Wild Center’s schedule of operation or COVID-19 safety policies, visit its website at www.wildcenter.org.