Harriet Tubman, 1870s. Harvey Lindsley/Library of Congress

Many people are aware of Harriet Tubman'south work on the Underground Railroad and as a sentinel, spy, guerrilla soldier, and nurse for the Spousal relationship Ground forces during the Civil War. Fewer know of her prowess every bit a naturalist.

At the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park in Church Creek, Maryland, Ranger Angela Crenshaw calls Tubman "the ultimate outdoors adult female." She even used bird calls to help guide her charges, eventually helping some seventy people, including her parents and four brothers, escape slavery.

"We know that she used the call of an owl to alert refugees and her freedom seekers that it was OK, or non OK, to come up out of hiding and proceed their journeying," Crenshaw says. "It would have been the Barred Owl, or as it is sometimes called, a 'hoot-owl.' 'They make a audio that some people think sounds like 'who cooks for you? Who cooks for y'all?' "

That nugget comes to Crenshaw from the park'due south historian, Kate Clifford Larson, author of the Tubman biographyBound for the Promised Land. "If you used the audio of an owl, it would blend in with the normal sounds yous would hear at night. It wouldn't create whatsoever suspicion," Crenshaw says.

Harriet Tubman spent much of her immature life in shut contact with the natural world. Likely born in 1822, she grew up in an area total of wetlands, swamps, and upland forests, giving her the skills she used expertly in her own quest for liberty in 1849. Her parents were enslaved, and Tubman'southward owners rented her out to neighbors every bit a domestic servant equally early every bit age five. At 7, she was hired out again, and her duties included walking into wet marshes to bank check muskrat traps. Tubman as well worked every bit a field mitt, in timber fields with her father and brothers on the north side of the Blackwater River, and at wharves in the area. All of this helped when, later, Tubman made xiii trips back to Maryland betwixt 1850 and 1860 to guide people to freedom. The abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison dubbed Tubman "Moses."

"It was in those timber fields where she learned the skills necessary to be a successful usher on the Secret Railroad," Crenshaw explains, "including how to read the mural, how to be comfortable in the wood, how to navigate and use the sounds that were natural in Dorchester Canton at the time."

Being able to travel and navigate was paramount for people risking their lives for freedom, and that's why it helped that Tubman was an astronomer, too, says Eola Dance, former coordinator for the National Park Service's Network to Freedom program. Similar other freedom seekers, Tubman used the North Star and the Big Dipper to orient herself.

"Tubman was leading family members also equally strangers from Maryland to Philadelphia, New York and equally far as St. Catharine's, Canada, by traveling at night, using science to find her way," Trip the light fantastic says.

Wetlands along the Choptank River, Maryland. The Choptank and other waterways on Maryland's Eastern Shore played crucial roles in the Underground Railroad, both for transportation and as conduits of information. Patrick Semansky/AP

Phytology proved another necessary skill; people used plants for nutrient and other survival needs. "Whether it was using certain plant life to quiet babies, or it could be relieving pain or cleaning wounds, this was the type of noesis that Tubman had," Trip the light fantastic says. Travelers forth the Underground Railroad would have as well looked for vegetables such as okra, tomatoes, collard greens, and trapped animals, such equally muskrats, she notes.

Tubman'southward natural expertise also helped her after her Cloak-and-dagger Railroad days when she served in the Marriage Ground forces, says Dance. She arrived at Fort Monroe, in Hampton Roads, Virginia, in 1861. Her feel with the waterways she crossed repeatedly while shepherding freedom seekers was essential again.

"If you're thinking of traveling from Maryland through Pennsylvania, Tubman would have had to cantankerous several rivers, creeks, and streams, and that would have been of import not only directionally, but besides something nosotros don't talk about every bit much: every bit in the way people were tracked," Trip the light fantastic says. "Freedom seekers would take been tracked past dogs, and by traveling through the water and knowing these waterways, it would have aided them in throwing off their smell then that the dogs would not be able to find them."

At the Harriet Tubman Hush-hush Railroad Land Park, Crenshaw likes to memorialize Tubman'due south connection to birds through poetry. She'southward memorized sometime U.S. poet laureate Robert Hayden'southward verse form Runagate, Runagate, which mentions Tubman, and also the owls she mimicked with such accuracy.

Hoot-owl calling in the ghosted air,

Five times calling to the hants in the air,

Shadow of a face up in the scary leaves,

Shadow of a voice in the talking leaves.

Combined, Harriet Tubman's understanding of the human environment, surrounding landscapes, and wildlife prepared her for both the great and pocket-size tasks of the Underground Railroad and the Civil State of war. To Dance, what's incredible is that Tubman began acquiring her expertise as a child, while doing what she had to do to just survive."Nosotros don't really think about what knowledge and skills she had to have," Trip the light fantastic toe says, "in order to achieve the impossible."