Project WET and Sierra Nevada Journeys Workshop by C ora

August 13, 2009, Thursday, my last day with Linda, this day came too fast. Seems like this whole thing started a week ago, and I am sad to say good-bye. I’ve met wonderful people I hopefully will see again, and I hopefully will see Linda again.

Well to start things off about today, we drove up to Sand Harbor at Lake Tahoe, to have a fun day in the sun and do a Project WET workshop with Sierra Nevada Journeys. Mary Kay put the whole thing together, and Pat was in charge of kayaking from Sand Harbor to Thunderbird Lodge. We did a little ice breaker, go to know one another, and then we’re paired off onto the kayaks. Of course me and Linda were together. The water was calm and peaceful and looked so silky and smooth you just wanted to fall asleep on it, well I did anyways. A young woman, no older than in her twenties, told us history about Tahoe as we were paddling and we actually stopped above a school of fish. When we arrived at the little beach we set up canopies and got everything ready for the activities. Linda and I started things off with two posters and six questions per team, teams were separated through an invisible line on the sand. If you answered the question correctly on the first clue you got four points and if you got it on the second you got three points and so on, but there was only four clues. After that we got pieces of paper and you crumpled them and then traced the top of the wrinkles with brown and then you’d add green for plants, and blue for water, and that was an activity to make your 3-D watershed. Linda and I presented the Incredible Journey.. Everybody got to make a water cycle bracelet and, at the end, tell their journey. After this activity was completed, we all got to have our lunch break. Pat told us about the house over the water, the Thunderbird Lodge, so after we settled our stomachs we headed over to the house. Since the waves and the wind were picking up we had to quickly migrate back to Sand Harbor after loading up the kayaks once more. The ride back was rough but it was challenging and fun. We got soaked a few times from the crash of the waves but it was nothing we couldn’t handle. Safely to the shore we unloaded and got into groups of six and had to defend and a make a solution for the problem we were given. Nick from Sierra Nevada Journeys was in charge of this activity and got us ready for the problem. The problem was this: Las Vegas is taking water from eastern Nevada and eastern Nevada needs water from the Truckee River. We were given a role to play, like acting, and you had to state why you thought the way your card told you. In the end we figured that we should use our water more carefully, and that Las Vegas should think again about taking our water. After the little groups gathered again to our big we all told our stories and solutions. Then Mary Kay talked to us for a while about the books we passed out and we started looking over some activities the teachers could do in the classrooms. Then as the day was hot and we were all tired Mary Kay decided to wrap up the day. This was my final day working with Linda and it couldn’t have been better.

Carson River Summer School Field Trip by Cora

July 21^st 2009, Linda and I worked with fourth graders teaching them about the Carson Watershed. They got into ten groups of four and sat around a map each group was given and we played a game kind of like ‘Where’s Waldo?’ I would pull out an animal pelt and Linda would say what it was, and at first I walked around with it so they could feel the fur but then Linda would take them from me so I wouldn’t have to. This was my very first time working with the animal pelts, and I was very uncomfortable. I couldn’t show the kids me emotions because if I was reacting weird to the pelts they would too. Well anyways they would find that animal on the map and then touch it. After that we ventured on for our hike down to the river. We stopped at the little wetland we had spotted before and we explained what wetlands were and how they were good to the environment. Linda and I did the activity about the wetlands where they pull out an object from the pillowcase. Every kid wanted to pull something from the pillow case, and they would crowd around me so I couldn’t move, and after they would pull they wanted to pull another one. So I ended up telling them to leave my area after they got to pick. A little girl said, ‘I haven’t picked yet. When are you going to let me pick? You’re not being fair.’ After that I didn’t let her go. Leaving the wetland was hard because the kids didn’t want to move. When we got around to the river, Linda played a game with them where they were detectives. They had to look around the river in the area we were in and decide if it was healthy or polluted. It was healthy, they decided. After we left from that little area, Linda and I walked down to a part where we had seen fishes the other day we were there, and little Jose followed us. Linda got a rock with bugs on it, but as we were walking toward the group of kids the bugs started falling off, so she got a new rock when we reached them by the river. The day was hot and no shade from clouds only trees, where ever you could find trees. It was fun working with the kids because they make you feel young again. A few little boys were saying songs that their friends made up that were around when I was there age, and they were drawing the same things I did when I was that age. It was just really pleasant.

Greenwings Festival at Canvasback Duck Club by Cora

Giving up a Saturday isn’t always what someone wants to do. I don’t like giving them up but I made the exception for this particular Saturday. Linda took me out to Stillwater where they were hosting a kid event sponsored by the Canvasback Duck Club. The project that Linda and I did was about wetlands. We both had one pillow case and we would have things in it that the audience would pull out of our bag. We’d ask them what it was and how they thought it resembled part of a wetland. The audience was always shocked when they would pull out a box of Corn Flakes cereal, and they’d say they had no idea what it was for. Well Linda would say, ‘in the morning you go and pour yourself a bowl of this because… (Pause)….because you’re hungry right?’ Then the kids would say, ‘oh yea!’ We were also right next to the booth where they painted the decoy ducks, so that booth was super busy and a few kids thought they had to go to our booth before they could go paint one. When ever we had some parents bring over their kids we would make them reach in the bag and pull out an item. So we tried to make it fun for everyone. We had some wetland soil and when we would explain what wetlands were Linda or I would open up the container and tell them to smell it, and Linda tried really hard to get the reaction of some of the funny faces they made but she wasn’t quite successful. At lunch time Linda and I walked around the room to see what was going on inside, they had exhibits of duck wings, duck drawings for a contest, darts, and a silent auction with some pretty neat stuff. They had boats and guns outside we had heard about but we didn’t look around outside to see what they had outside. We met a lot of new people, saw some very cute little kids, and although people thought this event was for boys there were a lot of girls there too.

Water is Peter's Best Friend by Cora

For my first project working with River Wranglers we created a flannel board. It’s titled ‘Water is Peter’s Best Friend’. The story is about a little boy named Peter, who has a best friend named Willy the water droplet. Willy tells Peter where water is and how good water is for everything. The flannel board is going in the Children’s Museum in the Carson River Watershed area of the museum. This project took quite some time to color and since I loved coloring I thought it was fun, now I don’t find coloring so fun, maybe not for a while. We presented the flannel board to Margie, Genie, Sue, and Mary Kay at an education working group meeting. It was the first time we had actually seen it fully together and complete. That was the point when I realized that it was finally done. Everybody who we presented it to thought it was it good, and they liked the colors we used. We are making another one, so hopefully this one can get done quicker now that we know what we are doing.

UNCE Environmental Festival by Cora

At the UNCE Environmental Festival at Fuji Park, our table (Linda and me) was H2Olympics. Linda taught about cohesion by having people use a water dropper and putting water drops onto pennies. The average guesses that people had were about four or five, but actually twenty or more was what they ended up with on their penny before it over flowed. A little boy said, ’Wow! That’s really neat! How can it keep the bubble on the penny like that?’ And that’s when Linda would tell them about cohesion again. The second part of the Olympics was there would be a cup full of water and people would try to put on as many paperclips as you could onto the surface of the water but they couldn’t drop or it wouldn’t count. This one was for learning surface tension, and it was compared to the little bugs that can walk on the water in the river or pool. A lot of people (of all ages) thought this was pretty neat. The last one we did was to show adhesion, and I’d have a full cup of water with a wet piece of yarn running down to another cup that was either empty or had some water in it. Place my finger over the yarn in the far back of the full cup and run the yarn down to the other cup and hold it right above it so you can see the water dripping. Then pour the water cup down so people can see the water running down the yarn and into the other cup. It was the biggest attraction and many people came over just to see it! ‘I want to try it!’ ‘Can I try it!?’ ‘That is so cool!’ were what we heard most of the time we did that activity. When the people coming around to booths started slowing down Linda and I would water color for our newest project and since Margie had a booth next to ours we had her come over and watercolor too. Before lunch Linda and I walked around and met some new people that were working the booths and we got a free tree each, Linda got a cucumber plant, I got a lanyard about being drug free, and I got to make a bird feeder at the wildlife booth. We learned about some of the fish they work with and Linda got a bracelet in the colors of orange and a peach to resemble fish eggs. The Nevada Museum had a booth their and they had pictures of bears and snakes and coyotes, and they actually had rubber coyotes poop and Linda picked it up and was playing with it. I thought it was real and was getting really grossed out by this action she did until she told me it was rubber and she wouldn’t really touch coyote poop. The Museum exhibit also had bear scat, and they had three different kinds of snakes soaking in water and they had five types of lizards also soaking in the water. They had two snakes fully preserved and out in the sun so you could see them. They kind of scared me a little. Another thing they had was bear and coyote fossil foot prints. Those were my favorite thing they had. Today was really fun, and being outside all day was a blast, luckily the health man had sunscreen for everyone.

The Incredible Journey at Empire Elementary School by Cora

Wednesday, July 15^th, Linda and I went to Empire Elementary school to teach 3^rd and 4^th graders about the water cycle. The project we did was The Incredible Journey, where you become a water droplet and you start some where in the water cycle. You start out with the sun bead, then you get placed, when you are at your starting point you put on that bead. After you get the bead you roll the die that is there and you go to wherever the die tells you to go in the water cycle. We taught three classes, and after I watched Linda teach the project in the first two classes she decided I was ready to teach the third class. So I would tell the class where you can go if you were in the part of the water cycle and what color bead you get. Then they were off. After all that my job became ‘The Tier’ and I would tie the bracelet off after they had gotten twelve beads and then put the bracelet on their wrists. A few of the kids didn’t follow directions and would roll the die, decide they didn’t like the spot they had to go to and would wander around to get the color they wanted. I caught them in the act and tattled to Linda. Then they pulled off the misplaced beads and put them back in the correct containers. I usually am a good teacher but I cannot keep the attention of little kids. So this was definitely a challenge, not having attention and not following directions. At least it was my favorite activity that I got to teach. I am very glad I got to teach but I wouldn’t do it again unless I was forced to (or Linda asked me to again).

Comstock Workers Wrap Trees at River by Cora

On Wednesday, July 8^th, the Comstock Workers program teamed up with the Dayton Valley Conservation District to wrap trees with wire for protection from the beavers. Blake Hiller was our leader and had planned on jobs for us to do. At first he had us pulling up dead White Top weeds from around the river bed. After that was accomplished Blake took us for a walk on the trails right around the river so we could learn about the damage that beavers were doing to the Cottonwood trees. Blake showed us how to wrap the trees so they would be safe from beavers and would still be able to grow. We then were put into groups and were given a new roll of wire and a pair of wire cutters. Around 10 o’clock Linda came and was helping out. Linda and I became a pair instead of a group and we went off to wrap some trees. We had to rewrap some of them, but then we got to wrap our own. We wrapped seven trees together over all and were forced back to our site to eat lunch. When that part of the day was through and everyone was gathered, Linda had an activity planned. Now earlier that day she told me I was going to be a beaver and asked if I would mind, because some people might laugh at me. Well I thought she was just kidding. She talked about the beavers for about five minutes, and then called me up to help her. I stood there thinking I was going to have to talk about what I knew about beavers or something but boy was I wrong. Linda started dressing me up like I was a beaver. She put flippers on my feet, a balloon under the raincoat for my lungs, gloves with plastic finger nails on them, goggles, a belt with a dust pan on the end for my tail, and just all kinds of stuff. Meanwhile a beaver pelt was being passed around. Nobody really wanted to touch it so they would a signal for the person to pass it to someone else. After all this, the day at the river was through. We went back to the community center and got our checks, and were told we were going to be wrapping trees down at the river again on the 29^th.

Weed Track and Attack Workshop by Cora

Saturday 6/13/09 Linda took me, for my first day working, to the Weed Track and Attack Day. There I met Margie, she was the reason for the day, Genie, she helped out with everything, and few other people. We got bags with information about the noxious weeds, a garden shovel, gloves, and a coloring book. At first we looked at the fake noxious weeds so we could see what they looked like and know to look for, and we would take notes about why they were noxious and how to treat them. Then Margie handed out a GPS to everyone and gave instructions of where to go on it and how to get there and basically how to use it. We walked out to the horses water barrel and we marked it on the GPS that that was where we were headed, and we tested it out a few times. Margie then took us on a hike around the ranch and we looked at the wild flowers and the non-noxious weeds. We found a total of three noxious weeds, and the third one we found Linda and a man who worked with nature dug up the weed down to the root to make sure it wouldn’t come back again. It had prickles on the base and it was so sharp that it cut the mans arm, only a little bit, he was bleeding maybe a few grains of sand. When we were on our hike it started pouring rain but everyone wanted to continue on but since it started feeling like hail we headed back and after about two minutes it stopped completely, so we explored on. We walked into some Russian Knapweeds but since they were so big we couldn’t pull them so Margie was going to go out and spray them down. Continuing on our walk we went by the Carson River and looked for more weeds but couldn’t find any. After that we headed back the ranch house and used our GPS to get us going back toward the horses water barrel. When we all returned to the ranch house we ate lunch and asked questions about the GPS and the weeds, then Margie gave us a paper that we could fill out if we found a noxious weed and then she would get rid of it. When Linda and I we’re saying good-bye to everybody a dark object fell from the tree and almost hit Genie on her head. When she looked up she found an owl in the tree and it spat out bones from some animal I thought was a mouse. So after the pictures were taken we left.

Cora Belle

Well to start things off my name is Cora, I was born April 12, 1994 to Lavurne in Reno, NV. I’m going into tenth grade at the best school I know which is Dayton High School Home of the Dust Devils. Sports are pretty much my life so I would die if I couldn’t play basketball or volleyball. During sports seasons I’m known to have the most school spirit and the best attitude, and since sports season never really ends I kind of have those all the time. I am in student counsel and the representative for the sophomore class. I am in a group called Stand Tall Don’t Fall, STDF, an organization that is against under age drinking, drugs, and tobacco. They have me as the leader in training and will take over my junior year. In school my favorite classes are P.E. and English, I’ve been told by all my English teachers that I’m a good write and that I should write stories, I like writing my thoughts on things and sometimes stories.
One thing I’m really passionate about is nature and earth. I think that everything is beautiful and everything has meaning and its all here for a purpose. I love all animals and I feel that eating something I love is unnatural, and I feel horrible every time I think about eating meat, so I am vegetarian. Since I’m so passionate about nature, I am going to go to college to learn Zoology and would like to be a photographer and take pictures of nature and sea life. After college I would like to travel across the world and visit everywhere I can.
Working with Linda this summer will help me go more towards my aspirations that I have for my life. In the fourth grade I went on a field trip to River Wranglers down by the Carson River out past the schools, the golf course and all the ranches. We got parted in to groups and sent off to different stations, one was about the water cycles and you tossed dice that landed on part of the cycle and then you put that color bead on the bracelet. Another station was about the animals that lived around the river and you could touch the animals’ fur and look at the bones and such. The last one I remember was when we went down to the river and got samples of the water and we would make the water cloudy with other substances that I can’t really remember very well. The field trip was probably the most fun I’d had the whole year of fourth grade.
This summer Community Chest in Virginia City, NV, wrote a grant for stimulus money and was then given 100,000 dollars to pay for the workers in The Comstock Workers Program. You had either been picked by the people in charge of the communities or you were nominated by the counselors to be put into the program. In Dayton we had 30 workers and I was lucky enough to be put into the program. We work 15 hours a week and 5 hours we have to do community service, which we do on Wednesdays, in order to get the full 20 hours week to get our full paychecks. We get paid $100 a week and in order to get the full $100 you have to work hard and do as you’re told. All 30 of us got put at different jobs, a few people work at the same place but on different shifts, and we could pick three possible places we would be working at. I chose to work at the Senior Center in Dayton, Healthy Communities Coalition in Dayton, and River Wranglers which I was told was in Dayton. We got stickers with who we were placed with and had to give our employers a call to set up an interview for our jobs. I got placed at HCC, as the office secretary and I would work with everybody in the office and I already knew who everybody was since my mom works there. I talked to my mom about it and told her this wasn’t where I would like to go, I only wrote it down because I had a space left and I really wanted to work at River Wranglers. We both talked to Frieda and decided that an office job would be to boring for me, and so I was moved to River Wranglers. Calling Linda to work out the interview was very hard since we played phone tag for a while but then when we got to talk we set up an interview for Thursday at the Community Center. I was really nervous to go interview with Linda because I didn’t know what questions I would have to answer or what would happen like she said she didn’t want me or I wouldn’t fit into the description she was looking for. The only thing I really knew going into that interview was Linda was a nice lady that my mom knew. Well to say the least I really had no reason to be nervous at all because the questions she asked me where different from what a real interview would be like and they really made me think about myself and what I was like. After starting my first day with Linda at the weed awareness workshop and after my second day working at her office coloring pictures I knew that this summer would be very fun for me if not her as well. Today is my third day and she is making me blog this for the River Wranglers website but it’s apart of my job and I like writing so I’m digging it. Linda is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and gotten to work with. She knows a lot of people and I meet a few of them everyday I’m with her. For my first job and her being my first boss I think I got off easy because of how wonderful she is. Well this is it I’ve got nothing left to say for now, so peace out.
- Cora J.

Carson River Festival at Ft. Churchill State Historic Park

Everyone was willing and excited...Ft. Churchill State Park, Silver Stage High School student volunteers, River Wranglers and nearly 400 kids from Natchez, East Valley, West End and Riverview Elementary Schools. This was our first attempt at a mega sized field trip and the teens did a fantastic job educating an overwhelming and eager crowd of 4th and 5th graders. What a great time we had learning about the Carson River watershed!

Special thanks to Patrick Peters, principal of Silver Stage High School and Kathryn Schaible, science instructor. The state park supervisor and employees did a great job teaching about the history of Ft. Churchill and arranging for a grant to pay the mountain man, camped up at the fort headquarters. The teens were, simply put, awesome. With the numbers of elementary kids attending this event, teens forfitted their lunch to work with them as they learned about boating safety, recycling, the use of goats in weed control, reptiles, birds....and much, much more.

Carson River Festival and Oodles of Noodles

This spring, River Wranglers conducted two Carson River Festivals; one in conjunction with the Dayton Valley Chamber of Commerce Oodles of Noodles Festival in Old Town Dayton and the other at Ft. Churchill State Historic Park with partners, Nevada State Parks and Silver Stage High School. It was a lot of work but great fun to work with teens from Dayton and Silver Stage High Schools.

The Oodles of Noodles offered us an audience that we never attracted on our own and it was great to teach the public about our watershed. Dayton teens did a great job preparing and they interacted well with all the people out spending an enjoyable day in the sun.

Thanks to the Lyon County Room Tax Board, we received a $2500 grant to advertise the event. Ryan Woodard, a student from Douglas High School, designed the artwork used on posters, flies, postcards and t-shirts. Thanks, Ryan and Lyon County Room Tax Board!

Silver State Charter School Shines!

Students from Silver State Charter High School worked with River Wranglers this past school year and did a great job teaching younger children about the Carson River watershed. In the fall, the students worked with Sutro Elementary School and taught activities about the water cycle, aquatic insects, water quality, and animals in the watershed. Science coordinator, Lynn Stephenson, works with the students one-on-one, helping them prepare to teach. The result of their team effort is wonderful and the elementary kids learn so much. Thanks to Lynn and the Silver State High School teens for a great 2008-09 school year!

Meet Cora, the Comstock Worker

President Obama awarded stimulus money to states to help with our crumbling economy. The Community Chest in Virginia City wrote a grant for $100,000 to put kids on the Comstock and surrounding area to work for the summer. Teens were nominated by school counselors to work for 15 hours and 5 hours of community service each week. The teens were placed throughout communities in Lyon and Storey counties to work. River Wranglers is lucky to have Cora, a teen from Dayton High School.

During her work this summer, Cora is blogging about what she does, what she learns and how this work experience is affecting her. She is posting weekly, or more frequently if she gets the writing urge, so be sure to keep up with Cora Belle updates.

River Wranglers thank the Community Chest and Healthy Communities Coalition for this great work project!

Catching up on the past year!

The impetus for this blog was the Patagonia Voice Your Choice program and when that ended I deflated like a balloon and haven't posted since. Now that we are looking at a great summer with our Comstock worker, Cora, I am excited about catching you up on the past year and moving forward with summer 2009.

Congratulations to Great Basin Water Network as the community choice to receive the Patagonia grant for $4000. They will do a great job using the money to affect decisions about water transfers from northern to southern Nevada.

We finished 2008 with Conserve Carson River Work Days in Carson and Dayton Valleys. Students from Douglas, Dayton, Silver State Charter School, and Silver Stage High Schools did a great job working with elementary kids from Minden, Gardnerville, CC Meneley, Dayton, Hugh Gallagher, Sutro, Riverview and Silver Springs elementary schools. Nearly 500 students worked along the banks of the Carson River, protecting habitat and learning about the watershed.