For-Mar: a donated dairy farm that became Burton's 383-acre preserve

The odd hyphenated name “For-Mar” is two people stitched together. They are Forbes and Martha Merkley. The couple ran a dairy farm on this ground in Burton. Then they gave it away to be a preserve. Forbes and Martha, the front and back of the name — a small piece of affection hiding in plain sight on every trail map.

What they handed over has stayed green while the city of Flint crept right up to its edges. Since 1970, For-Mar has held about 383 acres of meadow, mature woods, wetland, and pond. Walking trails stitch it together, flat enough for a stroller or an unsteady grandparent. Part of it is a maintained arboretum — a deliberate, labeled collection of trees. The grounds also keep the Foote Bird Museum. It is a wall of hundreds of mounted Michigan birds that has been startling schoolchildren for decades.

The Merkleys’ old pastures turn out to be good at every season. Spring brings the school groups and the first warblers. Autumn turns the woodlots the colors people drive north to see. Except this stretch is fifteen minutes from downtown Flint. Winter quiets the whole thing down to the squeak of snowshoes. It is the rare gift that keeps doing exactly what the givers intended. A working county gets to keep one dairy farm’s worth of woods, for free, forever.