Closer to Home

This week has been a great one, I must say.  But first, I have to brag that my daughter took one in the face for her basketball team and still scored 8 points in the game.  Way to wear a shiner to the dance, and make your team proud! 

Our visit to the Elwha River last weekend was a great opportunity to become more familiar with the Olympic National Forest and to hang out with the other Seniors from the peninsula campuses of Huxley.  The rivers in Western Washington were all running at or just above flood stage, so the Elwha was raging, and it made the discharge falls from the lower dam loud and powerful. 

We all chose our top three category picks to work on for the Environmental Impact Statement of the dam removals, and I'm hoping to get Natural Resources so I can have a chance to research the historic fish run numbers.  It will be interesting to keep an eye on recovering run numbers and see if, and how long it takes to see those numbers again.  So far, I haven't seen anyone else choose the category.

I'm interning much closer to home these days, and have a lot of great projects lined up at the City of Arlington.  Last year the city was able to obtain enough grant money to combine with their funds to purchase the old Country Charm Dairy.  Plans for the lower flood plain portion of the acreage include a large open play field (which I intend to write a low-mow plan for), a community farm and garden on existing farmland, a fishing pond, trails, a 26 site campground, and a safe swim area with an interpretive salmon education sign system.  To connect this property with the future downtown riverfront park plan an interpretive ecological and historical water trail for human powered watercraft with four pull-out areas is being designed.  Then Arlington will be a walkable and rowable city.  How cool is that? 

I'm also helping a fellow Senior intern with a four night ecology class curriculum sponsored by the city.  I'm not a great teacher, but I'm getting more patient.  At least this will be in front of a crowd and not as frustrating as tutoring.  I'm thinking about what portions I would be able to teach well and I'm leaning towards toxicology, flooding and perhaps some forest ecology if my friendly ex-forester neighbor will let me borrow some books.  The final night will be a green networking night, and I'm hoping to get the SnoCo PUD, the SnoCo Green Team and SnoCo Public Works there.  The Public Works biodiesel booth was an absolute hit at the Darrington Community Science night two years ago when I asked them to make some on site.  I love watching the public get excited about science, especially loggers.