Listening to the River

Enthralled with life in the watershed Mary shows the Listening to the River participants a crawfish (Photo: LTTR).

Article by: Mary Manner

Video feature by: Kate Trainer 

New Year's Day 2005 arrived cold and gray, humid and still.  A ten-minute walk through the woods, a few quick steps in icy water, and my kayak was floating on the pewter-colored waters of Bowers Harbor, tiny waves slurping against the hull.  It was a perfect morning for a paddle.

I headed east out of the shallows toward the drop-off, past the crinkled-up plastic milk jugs marking the sailboats' summer moorings, then turned south toward the tip of Neah-ta-wanta Point.  In winter the water is extraordinarily clear and still beneath the surface. I gazed into the depths at boulders the size of microwaves and TV sets scattered across the bottom, but mostly it was sand sprinkled over cobble.  Every rocky surface was covered with clumps of zebra mussels. 

A swan perturbed by my approach lifted off, its flight feathers making a hissing-whistling noise as they sliced through the air.  Early in the morning, this first day of the New Year, there was little traffic on the roads near the harbor, no engines whirring and tires whining.  The only sound was the sweep of those powerful wings in steady beat as the bird rose up and leveled off. 

The bird made a low, easy pass all the way around the harbor and came to rest again on the water near where it took off, and comfortably far from me.  I wondered-was it worth it?  All that work to fly away-and go nowhere.  Was I such a threat?  Or was the bird showing me a thing or two?  I paddled on my way toward the Point, making a show of leaving, but I knew its sideways eye was watching me.

A reef has formed on the lee side of Neah-ta-wanta Point in recent years, and I threaded my way through the shallow, rocky shoals to investigate.  Drawn by the idea of standing on new ground (the first human to set foot on these shoals?) I decided to put ashore.  As I ran the kayak up to the edge of the reef the bow ground against the bottom with a peculiar, jingling sound, and I realized this reef was not made of sand and pebbles like the rest of the harbor shoreline.  The reef is made of shells-millions and millions of zebra mussel shells.  I stepped out of the kayak and immediately sank into them up to my ankles.  Getting a bit wetter than I'd planned, I lurched toward solid ground, hauled the kayak up a ways, and set off on a grand exploration. 

A tangle of shrubs, grasses and goldenrod, over-spreading the dry middle part of the reef, rustled in a light breeze rounding the point from the northwest.  Along the edge it was shells, all shells, everywhere, a layer four inches thick and more, deeper on the windward side.  They made a crunching sound as I walked, a sound I'd heard before but not in Michigan.  It was the sound of footsteps on a driveway a thousand miles away on the Louisiana Gulf Coast where they use shells instead of gravel to pave driveways and back roads.  I crunched around the reef and back to the kayak, musing about these alien bivalves and the island they were building.

I like to think that most of us who live here in paradise regularly have these kinds of intimate experiences with the nature.  I also like to think that everyone appreciates the extraordinary beauty of this place, and accepts their role as stewards of the watershed.  But I also know that I was the only one out there kayaking on New Year's Day morning, and nobody but me heard that swan or made landfall on a reef made of zebra mussel shells.  It's one thing to appreciate our natural resources in principle-water is a precious resource, we must be mindful of how we use it-and another thing entirely to be a living, breathing part of the watershed, researching its mysteries and protecting its integrity.

Kids experiencing the watershed with audio, visual and video equipment (Photo: LTTR)

So I was especially grateful, a few weeks later, to attend a conference with other environmental educators, researchers, science experts, students and community members to discuss a new project, Listening to the River. We gathered for the day to learn more about the value of place-based education and informal science education, and to share our experiences about teaching-and learning-in the Boardman River Watershed. For some it was an opportunity to network with colleagues, while for others it was an eye-opening review of the work being done in our watershed to preserve, conserve and educate. And for some of us it was the beginning of a remarkable partnership whose mission is to create a community of science learners within the natural boundary of the Grand Traverse Bay Watershed.

The wisdom and insight shared during that summit conference became the substance of a proposal submitted to the National Science Foundation (NSF) later that year, supported by the combined efforts of the partners: Land Information Access Association (lead partner), Interlochen Public Radio, the Great Lakes Children's Museum, and Northwestern Michigan College. We proposed a novel approach to educating youth about watersheds by taking them on field expeditions in their own watershed, and providing opportunities for them to explore ideas and issues that arise from these direct experiences. Using cool technologies, they would share their discoveries by contributing content to an interactive Web-based map, producing radio pieces for local broadcast, and helping design a permanent, interactive exhibit for the Great Lakes Children's Museum that will teach children and families about our watershed.

When the grant was awarded in early 2006, Listening to the River (LTTR) quickly became a vibrant community of people, youth and adult, sharing experiences and ideas, and making connections throughout the watershed. LTTR was designed as an informal science education (ISE) project. By definition, ISE occurs outside the classroom and is not part of a curriculum or other formalized course of study. The true value of informal science education is that it relies on the interests and initiative of each learner to drive the progress of a project, "voluntary and self-directed" learning according to NSF. ISE projects present many challenges (e.g. finding out-of-school times that work for busy kids) and also great rewards (e.g. hearing kids say they want to come back for the next expedition).

We've also come to understand the role of ISE projects like LTTR in place-based education (PBE), and how this project could support learning in the classroom by providing enrichment activities outside it. In the classroom PBE uses an integrated curriculum and hands-on approach to connect learners to their environments through relevant and authentic learning experiences. PBE nurtures students' sense of belonging to their communities by engaging them in meaningful work on projects and problems of local significance. In the next two years of this project we hope to offer students opportunities to enrich their classroom studies by participating in LTTR programs designed to put their knowledge to use in helping us study and understand our watershed.

Kids doing LTTR are making observations and asking questions that matter to them and that reflect their values and perspectives. Understanding what kids are thinking about their environment and how they view their community, and identifying what they need to know to become caring, productive citizens of the watershed, comes from working and sharing experiences with them. We've learned a lot from the youth who've participated so far, and a lot about ourselves too. If this sounds interesting to you, please join us. Visit our website http://www.listeningtotheriver.org/ for information on becoming a part of this community.

Listening to the River (LTTR) is a placed-based experiential learning project focused on the Grand Traverse Bay Watershed. Click the play button below to watch the video of LTTR participants by project advisor and local videographer, Kate Trainer. 

 Listening to the River Video

Mary Manner is the Director of Education at the Great Lakes Children's Museum and a member of the Listening to the River project team.