Into the outdoors

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This article was published 15/02/2020 (2395 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Heather Hinam helps Manitobans discover the amazing in the everyday.

The 43-year-old Winnipeg resident is the founder and driving force behind Second Nature, Adventures in Discovery. Hinam combines a PhD in ecology with more than 20 years of experience as a nature and heritage interpreter to offer a variety of services through the business. These include tourism development, keynote presentations, customized group outings and creating interpretive media.

It’s a job that’s taken her all over the province. A few years ago, she started marking on a map of Manitoba all the different places she has visited. She’s about to pass the 400 mark, thanks in large part to her work.

“It’s great that I get to see so much of Manitoba,” Hinam says. “We really sell ourselves short sometimes. We have so many places and ecosystems to explore, and I feel privileged that I get to see them.”

Hinam’s love for nature started when she was a child, spending time at her family’s cottage in Hecla-Grindstone Provincial Park. She explored the outdoors and loved drawing the things she found, especially owls. (It’s a fascination that continues to this day. Hinam still participates in owl surveys and the licence plate on her car reads DR HOO.)

In high school, Hinam aspired to become a journalist and write for National Geographic. Those plans changed after she met people in the field of ecology, and she decided she wanted to do scientific research, not just write about it.

She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in zoology from the University of Manitoba before moving on to the University of Alberta for doctoral studies. Along the way, she got to explore the outdoors through various summer jobs that included working as an interpreter at FortWhyte Alive and as a pre-harvest survey biologist for the paper mill in Pine Falls.

These experiences further stoked Hinam’s interest in everything that can be found outdoors.

“I don’t care if it’s a bird or a lichen or a rock, I get excited about everything,” she says, adding with a laugh, “Everyone who’s been on a walk with me can attest to that, because we don’t get very far very fast.”

In addition to her background as a scientist, Hinam is an accomplished illustrator and photographer.

“My brain alternates between scientific and artistic, depending on my mood,” she says. “I appreciate nature for just its beauty, but I also like to understand how it works.”

Toward the end of her doctoral studies, Hinam realized that she wasn’t interested in becoming a full-time researcher. After working as a naturalist at a resort in Hecla for a few years, she started Second Nature in January 2011.

At the time, Hinam thought her focus would be taking people on nature tours. She does do some of that, but most of her work is in interpretative planning and design. She is currently working on two 12-foot murals for the Lake Winnipeg Visitor Centre in Gimli about how Lake Winnipeg’s watersheds and ecosystems work.

She’s also working on interpretive planning for the Dawson Trail as well as interpretive panels for Boissevain.

Along the way, she’s picked up tourism and entrepreneur awards, as well as recognition from local radio personality Ace Burpee, who named Hinam one of the 100 most fascinating Manitobans of 2018.

“I hope I’m getting information across and helping people understand their world. It’s my small way of making the world a better place,” Hinam says. “I really believe the better we understand and know something, the more we can care for it.”

Hinam’s advice for anyone who wants to get in touch with nature is to go outside, slow down and pay attention. You don’t have to go far to find something to appreciate.

“Any time you go for a walk, there’s a dozen or more things happening around you,” she says. “If you take a moment to notice them, suddenly it changes your perspective on the world.”

You don’t have to identify a particular species of animal or plant for the experience to be meaningful, Hinam adds.

“You just have to notice things and find why it’s special to you,” she says, adding that there are about a dozen trees around Winnipeg that she actively stops and spends time with whenever she is passing by them.

“They’ve become special to me,” she says. “I touch (them) and ground myself, remind myself that I’m among other living things and then I can keep on going.”

To learn more about Hinam’s work, visit discoversecondnature.ca