Sugar Loaf Cove to celebrate reopening with new exhibits, immersive audio walks
Sugar Loaf Cove will celebrate its reopening July 11 with interactive exhibits inside the visitor center and along its trails.
The event will feature a make-and-take paper craft station for all ages, a personalized poetry station, a live concert and the premiere of new artist-led audio walks by Diver Van Avery.
The exhibits at Sugar Loaf Cove also offer a different experience than those previously featured at the nature center.
“You’re going to be pushing down on pretend rocks to kind of get a sense of how the Sawtooth Mountains were formed,” Naturalist Dominque Menard told WTIP. “See how glaciers moved through the area. If you aren’t able to get down to the shore yourself, we have modeled rocks that show all of the layers of those ancient lava flows.”
The audio walks are among the nature center’s most distinctive new exhibits. In 2023, Van Avery approached Sugar Loaf Cove with a grant proposal to create the experience for one of the center’s trails.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, Van Avery wanted to create more intimate art experiences and felt compelled to tell stories inspired by nature.
“What I really wanted to do at first was a performance that unfolded on the trail, and there’d be dancers in the woods and musicians by the creek, and then I did the math and realized that would be a $200,000 project,” Van Avery told WTIP.
They reimagined the project as an experience for a single participant, leading to the concept of a narrative-based audio walk that visitors could listen to while exploring the trails.
Van Avery has worked in Minneapolis for 25 years as a writer, performer, director and arts administrator. Their work has been featured at the Walker Art Center. They first came to the North Shore through the YMCA camp system and Camp Menogyn.
Van Avery partnered with Menard to develop the audio walks. Menard said collaborating with Van Avery was easy because they shared a philosophy of “serving the land.”
“I got to take a wilderness philosophy course as part of my college class,” Menard told WTIP. “I was trying to sort out my own land ethics, and having this idea of I really can’t claim ownership to these places, but they can claim ownership of me”
Menard shared the history of Sugar Loaf Cove with Van Avery, from its past as an industrial site to its transformation into a nature center. She also provided Van Avery with what she called “assigned reading.”
Menard said the biggest challenge was explaining the project to others because there is little like it to compare it with. Still, she described the finished product as “beautiful and touching.”
“It’s something new. This isn’t going to be a fit for absolutely everyone,” Menard said. “I think offering that diversity of programming is also just really great for some people.”
WTIP spoke to Diver Van Avery and Dominique Menard about the audio walk project, nature, and the “uncomfortable” union of art and science. Audio of that conversation can be found below.
Josh Hinke June 24, 2026
