Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Living in a Caddisfly Case: Part One

By Cassie Sevigny

The wind carries the sharp, salty smell of dead seaweed, thick and dark, strewn across the grey stones. Most things are grey on the Puget Sound beach – the salted and sundried driftwood above the tide line, the clouds that hang overhead, the seagulls picking at picnic scraps, the puddles of rain… I relish the quiet, contemplative mood required to enjoy this grey but textured landscape. My siblings and I would spend hours collecting logs to build forts to withstand the tides and wind coming off the water, as if we were marooned and in need of shelter. This piece of ocean was my main connection to water for almost a decade. Then I moved to Montana.
Montana is landlocked. There is no ocean, not even a protected piece of one like Puget Sound. Nowhere to stand on a beach and imagine how far out the horizon expands. There were mountains and forest though, so with them as the structure of my new home, I sought out inland waters to nourish it.
The Watershed Education Network found me at a volunteer fair. They teach youth (and adults) about what makes a healthy watershed, at least for Missoula County. A woman named Becca gave me the basics of understanding water chemistry, insects, and measuring physical characteristics. She had bright, peppy eyes, frizzy hair in a perpetual ponytail, and an adoration for bugs.
I wanted peaceful moments to experience and learn about rivers myself before I taught watershed science to local kids, so I joined WEN’s citizen science program called Stream Team. Volunteers went out in the fall and spring to gather data from streams, as if we were doctors conducting check-ups. Each trip consisted of four hours of freezing our hands, checking the sky and our waders for leaks, estimating the river’s depth at full flows, and taking its temperature. I ate up the information, and the snacks packed by Deb, the Director. Like any other animal, I knew these people feeding me would be my friends.

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