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.
