By now, you may have heard about a scheme to build an amusement park-style gondola from the East Rim of the Grand Canyon, plunging 10,000 people per day down to the Confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers. On the rim of the canyon, a small town would be built to support the tourist traffic, while over 30,000 square feet of structures, including a pair of elevated steel walkways, a small restaurant, bathroom facilities and more, would be built mere yards above the river itself. On a recent broadcast of the Diane Rehm show, a representative of the project proponents argued that there are not enough opportunities for people, especially the elderly, young, or less fit to experience the Grand Canyon.

This idea is simply flawed – there are already a myriad of ways for anyone – rich or poor, able-bodied or disabled, American or foreign, to experience and enjoy the amazing, iconic, natural wonder of the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon provides a world class visitor experience, and nearly 5-million people per year will attest to that fact. As a World Heritage Site and one of the seven natural wonders of the world, the Grand Canyon is a place deserving of protection and enjoyment without more intrusion by man – as nature intended it:

A hike – along the rim or to the bottom

One of the simplest and most rewarding ways to experience the grandeur and natural expanse of the canyon is to lace on a pair of boots and hike the canyon.

Whether you plunge into the world below the rims, or meander the miles of dirt and paved trails skirting the canyon walls, plenty of options exist for hikers of any skill level.

Even if time doesn’t allow a hike all the way to the river, there are a variety of trails that lead you off the rims and into the abyss in only a few steps. In fact, programs exist today that have led blind, deaf, or otherwise disabled youth into the wilds of the Canyon. If these kids can do it – so can you!

Ride a mule

From either the North or South Rim of the canyon, mule trips as short as an hour to as long as two days exist for those who may not want to hike the trails, or for those who simply want a different kind of experience – old west style!

Mules have been traveling the trails from the rims to Phantom Ranch for over a century and provide a sure-footed, unique, alternative experience to hiking that is an adventure on its own!

Soak in the view from the rim

For those who have no desire to venture below the rims, simply soaking up the spectacular view, the clean mountain breezes, and the soaring condors, hawks, and ravens cruising the skies can be a peaceful, calming, and rewarding alternative to a more physical adventure.

On nearly every visit, you will find painters and artists, photographers and writers, contemplating the landscape, the brilliant light, and the spectacular expanse – from the rim of the canyon. The light and air and silence and sky that one can absorb simply by sitting on a bench or rock or under a tree is a humbling and awe-inspiring experience.

Float the mighty Colorado River

There are a wide array of rafting options available for people who have the time and adventurous spirit to experience a true wilderness getaway in the bottom of the canyon.

From as little as 3 days to as many as 28 days, there are a number of companies who offer commercial trips, as well as a community of private boaters who experience the canyon on the river’s terms – staring upwards at ramparts of rock by day, majestic starry skies by night.

Take to the skies

While certainly not my most preferred way to view the canyon, more modern technological ways to view the canyon do already exist. There are a variety of aircraft tours at both ends of the canyon – whether by fixed-wing airplanes or by helicopter, that cruise the skies overhead across the main canyon, as well as over side canyons, forests, and the desert plains that surround Grand Canyon National Park. Another, ground-based option is the Grand Canyon Skywalk on the west end of the canyon. Accessible by road from the north or from Las Vegas, the glass-floored Skywalk structure on the Hualapai reservation is one way to experience heights in the canyon by peering between your own two feet.

There is a variety of ways that anyone and everyone can currently enjoy and experience the Grand Canyon – and whether you choose to walk or ride or float or fly – you too can take part and enjoy our nation’s most iconic National Park. The Grand Canyon doesn’t need yet another man-made, technological solution to fix a problem that doesn’t even exist.

Now get your map out and get going!! The canyon is awaiting your visit!

The Black Warrior River — listed as one of America’s Most Endangered Rivers® of 2013 and 2011 — is the subject of this update from guest author Charles Scribner, Executive Director of the Black Warrior Riverkeeper.

Friday, June 19, Black Warrior Riverkeeper received inquiries from several reporters about a press release that Drummond Company had just sent to them related to their interest in the Shepherd Bend Mine. Drummond’s press release stated that they will not renew their permit to mine coal at Shepherd Bend. Needless to say, that was a very important announcement for the river, the people who enjoy it, and the 200,000 people in the Greater Birmingham area who receive their drinking water from the Birmingham Water Works Board’s intake across from Shepherd Bend.

This appears to be fantastic news for water consumers, however, lacking certain key details, including whether this decision is permanent, it would be premature to declare victory. Even if Drummond is permanently shelving its plan to mine at Shepherd Bend, we must keep the pressure on The University of Alabama to promise that they will never sell or lease their land or mineral rights to any mining company at Shepherd Bend. Our opposition to mining at Shepherd Bend was never specifically focused on Drummond, and if another company ever showed interest in Shepherd Bend, we would mount the same opposition.

The University of Alabama is still the major owner of land and mineral rights at the proposed Shepherd Bend Mine site across from a major drinking water supply area on the Black Warrior River’s Mulberry Fork. We have been partnering with American Rivers to battle this potential coal mine for a few years now. The university has a great opportunity to do the right thing NOW, and declare the Shepherd Bend site permanently closed to coal mining prospects.

We will continue to monitor the situation. We deeply appreciate American Rivers’ help with this issue, and ask that our tens of thousands of partners on this issue continue to stand with us in opposition to harmful coal mining at Shepherd Bend. To stay updated, please visit this page: www.blackwarriorriver.org/shepherdbendmin

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The Black Warrior Riverkeeper is a citizen-based nonprofit organization dedicated to improving water quality, habitat, recreation, and public health throughout the Black Warrior River watershed.

That image is the Catawba River, North Carolina. A hydropower project owned by Duke Power. The project has been operating on an annual license after its existing license expired in 2008. That is supposed to be a waterfalls.

What if the old hydropower dam that is killing fish and drying up your local river could be improved and brought up to modern environmental standards? What if there was a way to get the dam owner to release more water into the river, provide public access to recreate on the river, or help fish to swim past the dam safely?

Good news: there is a way to fix outdated dams. Every 30-50 years, the energy corporations that own the nation’s hydropower dams must get a new operating license from the federal government. When they do, we have a once-in-a-lifetime to bring these dams up to modern environmental standards. States can require dam owners to meet water quality standards. Federal fisheries and wildlife managers can require them to install safe fish passage facilities and protect endangered species. And the agencies that manage our public lands can require them to put water back into rivers so that you and I can fish, boat, and swim again.

Over the past three decades, American Rivers and our partners at the Hydropower Reform Coalition have used the licensing process to improve the operations of hundreds of hydropower dams and restore thousands of miles of river. In making these improvements, the hydropower industry has gone a long way towards rehabilitating its past legacy of environmental damage.

However, if the hydropower industry gets its way, these opportunities could be lost forever. Two industry-supported bills in Congress would largely would allow the hydropower industry to not have to comply with the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other basic requirements for providing fish passage and protecting public lands. Senator Lisa Murkowski’s Hydropower Improvement Act of 2015 (S. 1236) and the discussion draft proposed in the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power would turn back the clock and take the hydropower industry back to a time when they could destroy rivers with impunity. Neither Senator Murkowski’s “Hydropower Improvement Act” nor the House Subcommittee’s discussion draft improve anything except for energy corporation’s profit margins.

These bills would:

• Allow energy companies to opt out of Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and state water quality and wildlife protections.
• Let dam operators pass to taxpayers the costs and burdens of obeying water quality standards and wildlife laws and cleaning up pollution caused by the dams.
• Ignore modern environmental laws and let dam owners operate under 1950’s era rules — even if it means dead fish and dried up stretches of river.
• Strip states and tribes of their authority to hold hydropower dam owners accountable to water quality laws.
• Transfer the authority to protect natural resources away from the state and federal agencies that manage those resources to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a virtually unaccountable energy-permitting agency in Washington, DC.
• Make local communities responsible for all the costs and burdens of obeying water quality and wildlife management rules when dam owners don’t follow the law.
• Let anyone, regardless of their qualifications, build hydropower (up to 5 MW) on an existing dam without first proving they won’t pollute the drinking water or put local residents at risk.

The industry says that these provisions are intended to “modernize” hydropower regulation, but I find it hard to understand what is modern about eliminating basic protections for fish, wildlife, clean water, and outdoor recreation. These bills are so damaging that the Obama Administration, many states, and dozens of conservation groups have spoken out against them.

If these bills were to become law, many improvements we have made over the past decades could be nullified. We could lose the opportunities we’ve gained to paddle the world-class whitewater on the Cheoah river in North Carolina, or fish on the Boardman River in Michigan.

These bills would allow energy corporations to get out of having to comply with the laws that protect our rivers and water. Federal hydropower licenses give these companies the exclusive right to profit for up to half a century off of these public resources. As a condition of that extraordinary right, companies should be required to protect those resources for current and future generations. I don’t understand why an industry that has spent so much time and money trying to portray itself as a clean, green source or renewable energy is so determined to opt out of its responsibility to protect the environment. If these bills pass, the only thing “green” about hydropower will be the money flowing into dam owners’ pockets at the expense of America’s rivers.

I had the good fortune to be the son of a man who loved nature. He brought me up fishing and hunting, and when those were out of season, he would take me on long walks in the woods. Seeing a deer through the trees, a hawk circling overhead, or a trout holding in the current was always worth stopping our conversations to take notice.

When I was young, he carried me on his shoulders through rough water. He taught me how to fish just like his dad had taught him. He showed me how to find our way back by measuring the angle of the trees’ shadows to the direction we were walking. And when a proposed dam threatened to destroy a wilderness preserve that we loved, we talked about how we could raise our voice against it.

After initially working in the corporate world, he spent the last half of his career working for the Environmental Protection Agency. He was so proud of how their efforts protected what was so important. It is no coincidence that after years working for a large corporation, I ended up at American Rivers, doing what I can to protect what he showed me was precious.

So on this Father’s Day, I will be remembering his influence, his long stride through the woods, and his broad grin when holding a trout in a small stream.

Hoping to share this with the next generation, this Father’s Day my wife and I will be taking our children backpacking in Yosemite. While they have been on many day-hikes to beautiful places, it will be their first time truly in the backcountry with only those few things they really need. We’ll see meadows, peaks, lakes, and rivers. Their eyes will be opened to how big nature is and how far you can see. And with a bit of luck, they will feel the same connection to the outdoor world that my dad showed me.

The love of nature is a gift that goes in both directions and can keep going as long as we pass it on. Who helped you learn to love being outside? And have you been able to share that with other?

My father and stepmom were river rats, and from a very early age, they introduced me to the mighty rivers of the Southwest.

Many summers we would have more than one trip down the San Juan, and as I got a bit older, I was able to bring friends, girlfriends, buddies to experience this world well off the beaten path. By the time I left for college, I was guiding trips with my university outdoors club on the river that I had explored and contemplated so many times.

We would scramble the side canyons, swim the rapids, jockey for how many skips we could get from that flat rock. There were also many quiet times – moments in the dying sunset where my dad and I would sit and stare at the campfire, contemplating growing up and growing older. I have grainy photos of us sitting on the beach in ratty camp chairs, with a Coors between our legs, just he and I – we were both younger then.

Fast forward to today.

Over the past year, I have been working with film maker Forest Woodward and author Brendan Leonard to bring Forest’s story of his Dad, a 1970’s-era kayaker in the Grand Canyon, to life on the big screen.

Check it out here:

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The Important Places was released in partnership with NRS and Chacos. It won the Most Inspiring Film award at the 2015 5Point Film Festival, and was an Official Selection for this year’s MountainFilm Festival in Telluride.

This heartfelt story pulled me back to the San Juan and the connection that this river creates between my father and me.

Now that my Dad is in his mid-70s, the intersection of these two stories reminds me so much of the special times with my dad and makes me reflect on all of the important places and people I have been lucky to have.

Take a few minutes and watch this amazing piece of work, and think about the important places that connect our hearts, reminding us of those connections that are so vital to each and every one of us.

Then share your story with us. Tell us who helped you remember the value in protecting these places.

I often say that, while those who want to harm, destroy, exploit, or otherwise permanently alter our amazing natural landscapes have the ability to lose fight after fight to get what they want, conservationists and those who want to protect our natural heritage can only afford to lose once – as once we lose, what we are fighting for is lost forever. Today, a stark reminder of that fact is brought to the forefront once again, on WAMU’s Diane Rehm show.

American Rivers President Bob Irvin was featured on the show, mainly to talk about the potential for increased groundwater development at the Grand Canyon, and our approach in wanting to protect the grandeur and natural wonder of the canyon for all of us, for all time. Interestingly, Albert Hale of the Confluence Partners, the project proponents behind the Grand Canyon Escalade, was also on the show, and he made a number of statements that paint a very clear, and shockingly scary picture – that the fire to build the Escalade project on the East Rim of the Grand Canyon is very much alive and well, and they are driving forward. The most alarming statement was in response to the fact that newly elected Navajo Nation President, Russell Begaye, has made statements in strong opposition to the project. Mr. Hale implied that Chairman Begaye’s wishes are irrelevant, and that the Confluence Partners “have an agreement moving forward to the (Navajo Nation) council right now.”

This reminds us to stay diligent, to be on point, and to remember that the drive to exploit and leverage any means necessary to get what they want is real, and will remain active until the last nail is driven into the coffin of this terrible project. Grand Canyon National Park is against this project. The American people have spoken loudly against it, and told their stories passionately against any harm to the canyon. And the people who have the most to lose, the nearly dozen Native American tribes that call this place sacred, have spoken clearly against the Escalade.

Our guard cannot be let down, and we need you to join us to defeat the disrespectful desecration of this irreplaceable national treasure.

What if there was a way to reduce stormwater runoff as well as provide access to healthy food in low income urban areas?  What if this practice was being done in cities across the Nation?

Farms are not just for rural areas; the practice of urban agriculture is a growing trend in inner-city neighborhoods across the country to address the issues of food deserts and stormwater runoff.  The impetus behind this trend is to provide healthy food to city residents as well as to reduce stormwater runoff.  Using urban agriculture as a green stormwater infrastructure practice can reduce the amount of nutrients that flow into waterways and destroy their ecological health and the community benefits they provide.

Why We Need Stormwater Practices

Rain fall in urban areas picks up pollutants such as heavy metals, oil, and grease as it flows across impervious surfaces such as streets, parking lots, and roofs.  Polluted runoff is a major source of water pollution in watersheds across the United States. Increased development and urbanization combined with expensive water infrastructure updates have communities across the country starting to incorporate innovative approaches to manage stormwater runoff, such as urban agriculture, which in turn will protect clean water and public health.

Urban Agriculture as a Green Infrastructure Practice

Green infrastructure is a water management system or practice that uses natural processes to infiltrate stormwater runoff on the site where the runoff is generated.  Urban agriculture is a green infrastructure tool because it creates a pervious surface where an impervious surface once was and plants have a propensity to soak up rainwater.

Many urban areas have vacant and unused lots that serve no purpose to the city or surrounding neighborhood, and are typically made up of poor quality soils that are compacted due to years of development and are not conducive to water infiltration. Creating an urban farm in these lots reduces the amount of stormwater runoff due to the looser soil and the addition of plants.

Urban agriculture provides more benefits than green infrastructure does alone. Farms improve the local economy by creating jobs and increasing property values, improve nutritional health of underserved communities by giving local access to healthy food options, and connect residents to their environment by providing greenspace to enjoy.  For these reasons, urban areas across the country should integrate agriculture into their cityscape.

Check out these links to learn more about urban agriculture:

• modernfarmer.com
• greenroofs.com
• greenroofs.org
• seedstock.com
• urbanfarmonline.com
• urbanfarming.org
• growingpower.org
• beginningfarmers.org/urban-farming

As a national leader on dam removal, American Rivers strives to provide resources to the public to help inspire, educate, and ultimately increase the comfort level of groups working on-the-ground that would like to get involved in opening up rivers across the country. Did you know that we have an entire online resource center packed with great information about dam removal? You should check it out!

If you prefer to watch-and-learn, we have captured an informative series of presentations about the process of taking out dams in a video series. These videos allow you to virtually attend one of our training sessions in the comfort of your own home or office. The best part is that you can go back and reference them in whole, or in part, whenever you are unsure about how to take the next step in a dam removal project.

In an effort to make our dam removal trainings even more accessible remotely, today we are sharing our how-to manual — Removing Small Dams: A Basic Guide for Project ManagersRemoving Small Dams: A Basic Guide for Project Managers. This guide contains useful information on many dam removal related topics, such as:

• Recruiting a Good Project Manager
• Dam Removal Check List
• Conducting Initial Reconnaissance
• Funding Your Dam Removal Project
• Developing a Preliminary Design Plan
• Finalizing Your Engineering Design
• Helping Your Community Learn About Your Project
• Completing Your Project
• Monitoring Your Project

American Rivers has been refining the content of this manual for a number of years, and many practitioners have found it to be a very useful starting point for getting acquainted with the process of removing a dam. At first, this process might seem a bit daunting. However, you do not have to be an engineer, or hydrologist, or an expert in river habitat in order to remove a dam. You only need to recognize your strengths and be willing to reach out to, and partner with, others who are experts in these various fields. No one can remove a dam on their own. Recruiting a great team of experienced professionals (as with many things in this world) is the first step towards achieving a successful dam removal project and restoring a healthy river!

Let me cut to the chase. The Escalade tram and massive construction project that were proposed in the Grand Canyon have been dealt a serious blow.

Incoming Navajo President Russell Begaye and Navajo Vice President Jonathan Nez have made strong public statements opposing the misguided Escalade project in the heart of the canyon. This is big news. Your voice, along with more than 200,000 others, helped raise awareness about this issue.

And with the support of our partners, we have seriously set back this terrible project. Thank you for helping us raise awareness about the need to protect the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon – America’s Most Endangered River of 2015 – and for making this significant progress possible.

But other development continues to threaten beauty of the Grand Canyon.

Outside the National Park, developers proposed a dramatic expansion of the town of Tusayan on the canyon’s South Rim. This expansion could add thousands of new homes and retail stores. But the question is: how will they secure water to support the expansion?

If the Tusayan developers tap the groundwater that feeds the canyon’s seeps, springs, and waterfalls, it would threaten rare ecological treasures in the heart of the desert. No expansion of the town should be approved without an enforceable, sustainable plan to safeguard the groundwater resources that directly impact the Grand Canyon.

Right now, we are working with the Forest Service to ensure there is a plan to protect the groundwater resources that are directly connected to Grand Canyon National Park. We will continue to keep you updated about threats to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, and ways you can speak up to protect this special place.

But for today, I want to thank you for your ongoing support. This victory couldn’t have happened without people like you.

An important aspect of implementing green infrastructure in a community is education. The community needs to understand what it is, why it’s important, and what they can do themselves on a small residential scale to contribute to making green infrastructure a priority in their community.

American Rivers has been involved in the Toledo-Lucas County Rain Garden Initiative for many years. This organization works with residents, schools, churches, and community centers to educate them on the benefits of rain gardens, and in addition lend expertise to help design and install rain gardens. Recently, we identified rain gardens throughout Toledo and Lucas County that did not have any signage. Having educational signage is a key way to educate passer-byers and raise awareness in the community. Many of the rain gardens already installed that did not have signs were located at schools around town. The cost for permanent signs can usually be written in to grant funded projects, but most of these are not grant funded projects. 

One solution to this was discovered by building a partnership with a local High School Senior, Alexander Okonta. He was able to create and install an educational rain garden sign at one of the school rain gardens for his Eagle Scout Service Project. Okonta was able to work with the school, the City of Toledo and the Rain Garden Initiative to come up with the design of the sign and locate a school rain garden that was in need of valuable signage. The Eagle Scout Service Project is supposed to allow the Scout to demonstrate his leadership in service of others. This partnership was beneficial to Okonta, and more importantly a huge benefit for the school and the greater community by having a platform to educate them about the environmental, social, and economic benefits from rain gardens and other green infrastructure practices.

This is a guest post by Neil Wagner, a relief pitcher for the Tampa Bay Rays.

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The English novelist J.B. Priestly said of the Grand Canyon that “there is of course, no sense at all in trying to describe the Grand Canyon. Those who have not seen it will not believe any possible description. Those who have seen it know that it cannot be described.”

Nevertheless, any discussion of why the canyon should be preserved must necessarily begin with a description of why it is important to begin with. One of the most famously beautiful places in the world and a place that people go to expecting to be awed, it still manages to stun even the most cynical visitor at first sight. Even though the canyon is a mile deep and ten miles wide, it is not until you come nearly to the precipice that you can actually see into the canyon. But when you do step up to the canyon’s edge, as I first did during an October sunset at Bright Angel point, you see one of the most spectacular sights there is to be seen anywhere, with only the tiny footpath that is the Bright Angel Trail suggesting that mankind has ever penetrated its depths.

It is important for us — people in general, but Americans in particular — to have places like this. Places where we are not masters of our environment, but are visitors to places where a portion of our natural patrimony has been preserved in its original, unspoiled state. My Grand Canyon hiking and backpacking trips are some of the most resonant experiences of my life specifically because of the solitude, isolation and true remoteness that exist there and few other places in modern life.

Seeing deer in the park across the street from my house is amusing, but when my wife and I rounded a bend of the Bright Angel trail and encountered a buck standing directly in front of us, it spoke to me deeply. The way we all intently studied one another for a few moments then simply passed each other like fellow hikers on the narrow path was truly magical. It is also the type of moment that would probably cease to be possible if the proposed Escalade development in and around the Grand Canyon is allowed to move forward.

I am heartened by recent statements from the Navajo Nation that dim the prospects of the misguided Escalade development.

The proposal would, among other things, run a gondola from the rim of the canyon to the Colorado River. I cherish the memory of walking along the Colorado and touching the exposed Vishnu schist basement rocks (at 1.7 billion years old, they pre-date multicellular life by 700 million years) and would wish for this same experience for everyone. However, I cannot help but worry that those riding the proposed tram to the bottom would be experiencing a grand and beautiful canyon, but would miss the essence of the Grand Canyon.

Those in favor of the proposal will likely crow about minimizing the project’s footprint and many well-meaning citizens will probably accept those claims, hope for the best and maybe plan a visit. But to be clear, this is only superficially like the construction of Going-to-the-Sun highway in Glacier or the blasting of elevator shafts into Carlsbad Caverns. Those projects did not alter the fundamental structure of the landscape and yet they served to grant the public greater access to their spectacular natural showplaces. The gondola and associated development would mar a spectacular landscape in the name of commercial interests.

I would reiterate words of my favorite president Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1903 said that “In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which, so far as I know, is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it in your own interest and in the interest of the country to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is…Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see.”

I am grateful to American Rivers for highlighting the need to protect the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon through its America’s Most Endangered Rivers campaign.

We must all remain vigilant about safeguarding the Grand Canyon and our nation’s other wild treasures.

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Neil Wagner is an avid hiker and outdoor enthusiast. He is a pitcher for the Tampa Bay Rays and is currently rehabbing from August 2014 Tommy John surgery.

American Rivers held a successful Waccamaw River Cleanup May 30 at East Bay Park and Landing in Georgetown, South Carolina. Thirty people volunteered to clean up the Waccamaw River on land and on the water in kayaks provided by Blackriver Outdoors Center. A diverse array of cleanup participants, ranging in age from 14 to almost 70, helped collect everyday trash such as soda bottles as well as odd items including a yoga mat from our precious waters. Paddle veterans joined first-time kayakers excited to get a lesson and then try out their new skills while helping to clean up our river and harbor.

Some of those new paddlers were from a group of ten students from Duke University who are living and interning in Georgetown County this summer. Our group also included three teenage girls who had just moved to the area from New York. I was also celebrating a first: This was the first cleanup I organized, and I was proud to see everyone launch, outfitted with life jackets and paddles — 22 colorful kayaks and one speed boat dotting the water with people laughing, splashing, enjoying our river and bay, and eager to clean up the water at the same time.
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The speed boat and its pilot, Ron Hartman, were key to our tremendous success. Hartman cruised between the kayakers in regular circuits collecting bulk items and full bags of trash and returning them to shore. This makeshift assembly line let our energetic group collect more than 300 pounds of trash from the end point of the Waccamaw River Blue Trail. Our most unusual piece of trash: a battered mini fridge that volunteer Jane Ochsenbein found and towed victoriously behind her kayak before loading it on Hartman’s boat.

I was sick the whole week before the event, and I still wasn’t feeling great Friday evening. But Saturday morning, I was at East Bay Park well before 9 am to hang up my American Rivers banner and set out our trash bags, gloves, pickers, and snacks. I was excited to greet all the volunteers who made time on a Saturday morning to join me. I was eager to share a little of our precious blackwater river and what I love about it – the jewel colored sunsets, a unique ecosystem that contains carnivorous plants that are found few places in the world, and the amazing, generous people that I’ve met and paddled with, who have nothing in common except their love of this river and its bay.

The event was a success by all the metrics we use to measure river cleanups, as well as one personal metric. At the end of the event, the Duke students thanked me and asked if there would be other opportunities to volunteer to help protect or restore the river. I can’t wait to see them on the river soon!