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Recreating the escape route to northern states and Canada for fleeing slaves "History by immersion," is how the Conner Prairie interactive history park outside Indianapolis, Indiana, describes a program about a perilous journey to freedom endured by escaped southern slaves during the 19th-century. It is an unforgettable walk in the woods that has special meaning during February, which is Black History Month in the United States.The program is called Follow the North Star. The name is adapted from an old American Negro spiritual song, Follow the Drinking Gourd. In the years before and during the U.S. Civil War of the 1860s, escaped slaves fled northward, hiding by day and moving furtively at night. Often their only guide was Polaris, the North Star, which they found by tracing the handle of the Big Dipper constellation, or Drinking Gourd. But even when they crossed the Ohio and Potomac Rivers, they were by no means safe. Slave catchers scoured free northern states like Indiana, looking for runaways.