Fred and Friends

My life changed this past summer after a wonderful visit to Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. There were the albatross, one in paricular that haunts me. Then too, the dolphins, many honu, and great new friends who I now call on to help teach ocean to kids around the world.

The little baby albatross, the one I say haunts me, was an individual among the million or so living out there in the middle of the Pacific. Each morning, I would get up with the sun and walk to a place I call Monk Seal Point. Many mornings, I had to circle wide, giving space to the resting seals. Sometimes, Annie Bell and Walterbea came too. It was a good place to visit in the first hours of our days together and I cherish every moment.

The first morning I photographed my young albatross friend, she or he, I never learned which.........was right at the very edge of the Naupaka. I've always loved this plant and use it for clearing the lens of my mask each time I snorkel. Nenes really like its berries that remind me of snowberry back home. Soft, round, smooth berries that puff when you pinch them.

Little albatross walked down to the water's edge on the second morning I met this special bird. Fred was with me and somehow that moment became a special time of bonding between bird, monkey, and me. Fred, you have to understand, is a very special monkey. A gift from my friend Paula. She let me on to him the year before when she was teaching kindergarten and told her kiddos that a monkey named Fred was causing any kind of missing marker, messed up desk, or any other major kindergarten tragedy. But, she never ever let the kids see this magical monkey. He remained a mystery creature until shortly after my last visit to her school.

Fred, I decided, would come with me to Piheman. To Midway Atoll. And so the story began as Fred snuck into my suitcase when I stopped by the kindergarten room. I soon wrote to the kids, drawing a picture of Fred as if being xrayed at the airport within my suitcase. I told them Fred was coming with me and before long, postcards were flying to kids, chronicling Fred's journey and soon to be, journeys around the world.

I shared the idea of postcards from Fred with other teachers, including my friend, Debbie Charna at Columbus School for Girls. I asked her and others to see if students might have questions for Fred to answer while out at Papahanaumokuakea. Little did I know where this would lead; how charming and intellectually challenging the child originated questions might be.

I prepared for the journey, packing my alloted 40 pounds of camera gear, clothing field guides, and little more into a backpack and suitcase. Soon, I was off with Fred poking his head out from a zippered pocket of the pack. He was now free to be seen by one and all and before I even left Seattle Tacoma International, he was obviously making a mark on the world. People seemed to love the idea of a monkey traveling with an old guy like me.

The first to really take notice were the gals at Dilletante, a Seattle chocolate shop I've known since it opened its doors up on Capital Hill where my family and I lived when I was going to college at the University of Washington. They make the best chocolate on the planet and their small coffee stand in the airport rises above all other for many reasons, not the least of which is that it is virtually plastic free. Fred noticed this when I bought a treat enroute to the Hawaiian flight to Oahu, first leg of our journey.

Fred demanded a photo with the more than cute and friendly girls and we were off on our first plane ride together. Several days later, after great learning experiences on Oahu to prepare for Papahanaumokuakea, Fred and I were becoming intimate friends with a baby albatross about to attempt to leave its island home. All around the bird and the two ape friends, fairy terns hovered and frigates dove, while the offshore lagoon waters painted a scene you know from any dreams you might have had of the most diverse and soft blue of any water on planet ocean.

White sand beneath our feet was painted a deadlier red, blue, and green. All plasticized by incoming debris from every corner of the globe. Plastic so pervasive it was impossible to scan an inch of sand without seeing micro pieces of a world so far removed from this otherwise peaceful and idyllic place. 

to be continued............ 

HOW TO BE A RAVEN

19 Sept......just got word that our new book, An Alaska Adventure will arrive at the end of this month! Here's a page from one of the final edit checks.......Ilustration by Yuko Green. Yuko and I worked together on Winter is for Whales and had a lot of fun with this new book that tells the story of two kids who visit Alaska with their parents. Sarah and Cole head north from their home in Columbus, Ohio. They pan for gold, photograph brown bears and wolves, and Sarah falls for the Ravens!

I'm most proud of this book for a couple of reasons. It might be the first book to include a woman bush pilot. She's a former classmate of Sarah's mom from college days. They bump into her in a Fairbanks coffee shop and she takes them on a last minute journey to her home in Barrow. As Sarah says, "Beverly is Inupiat and so totally awesome --- she is a PILOT. She is going to fly us up to where her family lives in Barrow!" This leg of the trip leads to the blanket toss, illustrated above........and to Cole's meeting of Beverly's nephew who shares a love of basketball with the young traveler from Ohio.

I wanted to pay some tribute in this book to two of my all time favorite teachers. So, I enouraged young Sarah and Cole to journal each day and to send postcards back to their classmates at Columbus School for Girls and Wyandot Elementary. The postcards are for Paula Vertikoff and Charlotte Stiverson who teach with such loving grace......... Sarah got a little creative help from a real live student poet from another Ohio school. I'm happy to introduce her writing to you. After 30 years of trying to include kid writing in one of my books, here is the winning entry in a poetry contest designed just for this book:

HOW TO BE A RAVEN

BY ALEXUS

Always be the smart bird,

Always yell louder than any other singing bird,

Fly upside down for fun

Do rolls and somersaults when flying,

Stay tough and buff.

You can read her poem and the rest of the adventures, journals, postcards, and gold panning secret mapping in our new Alaska book. Buy a copy directly from the publisher, Island Heritage or from Amazon or other booksellers.

Contact me for a special edition Bookplate that might just feature autographs from Yuko, Alexus, me, and a raven or two. And don't forget to fly upside down for fun.

WATERSHEDS

The Seabeck Salmon Team at Nick's Lagoon.





Here in Washington State there is a project called Salmon in the Classroom. Calling it Salmon IN the Classroom should be a tip off, a loud and clear message that this is not a good idea. I've been opposed to it since its inception, both as a biologist and as a teacher. My main concerns are that fish like salmon have no business spending time indoors. They were truly born to be wild. Learn a little about wild salmon ecology and you'll know that salmon in classrooms are started out as eggs stripped from hatchery fish, placed in tanks, taken to schools, raised for a while, then released into a stream. Typically, the stream they are released into is not their parent stream. Worse yet, the stream might be many watersheds away from the natal stream.

Often carrying fungal diseases into the stream after life in an aquarium, the salmon are let go with possible lethal effects on fish living in the receiving waters.

I do agree with the original thought behind this project. It is a wonderful notion to get kids excited about salmon. Letting them see fish develop from egg to kid salmon is a good thing.

My objection centers mainly on the fact that a far more exciting alternative exists throughout salmon country. I've not wanted to simply voice my opposition without working hard to see that kids take advantage of the alternative. Here are a couple of examples based on salmon streams, one on trout streams, and a couple related examples of good watershed teachings on midwestern streams, far from salmon waters.

I did a one day author visit at Seabeck Elementary in Seabeck, Washington about ten years ago. I showed slides and talked with the kids about water projects I'd gotten involved with in Ohio. A mom in the audience came up to me after the presentation and we talked a bit. She got excited about "doing something with the kids".

I asked if they ever took the kids to nearby Seabeck Creek. No. But they did raise salmon in the classroom, hatchery fish they released each year at a bridge crossing.
Long story very short, we started taking the kids to the stream about once a week and the mom and many other moms and dads started an after school "Salmon Team" somewhat like soccer or baseball. The kids showed up, but had to try out for the team. They also had to share what they learned with their classmates the day after our adventures in Seabeck Creek.

After a year of sampling salmon in Seabeck Creek, the kids became local experts and soon shared their knowledge at workshops, water celebrations, and salmon conservation group meetings. We started wandering away from Seabeck Creek during the second or third year of study and one of the kids and I stumbled on a small estuary. It was an enclosed lagoon fed by five springfed streams. I did a little research and discovered that virtually nothing was known about the largest of the streams and nothing at all was known about the smallest four. The lagoon itself was soon found to be a rearing place for juvenile salmon and I named it Nick's Lagoon after the boy who first discovered the beautiful little piece of water.

We started focusing a lot of attention on the lagoon and streams, naming each for kids in the Salmon Team. There was Muddy Marc Creek for the kid who got wet quicker and muddier faster than any I've ever worked with. Joe's Creek is a short run stream named for one of the best salmon finding kids around.

We carefully chronicled our findings, especially after discovering that chinook salmon swam into the lagoon from other streams, spending time there even though the adults did not visit its waters. This made the place highly valuable for many reasons. Juvenile rearing habitat is precious these days due to loss of habitat. Chinook are threatened species too. So, when the entire property surrounding the lagoon was listed for sale, we took action.

Teaming with the Trust for Public Land, Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe, and Kitsap County Parks, we raised the funds to purchase the property. This is all with thanks to the Seabeck Salmon Team. They could have sat back in the classroom and stared at fish in a tank, but their long road to saving a valuable habitat became an environmental award winning project. Nick's Lagoon is now preserved as a natural area park managed by the county and watched over by the kids and families who protected it.


More recently, I visited Breidablik Elementary, a school just north of Seabeck and a school (not the same building) my grandmother attended in the early 1900s. They too had a salmon in the classroom project and would place the fish in Jump Off Joe Creek, a stream that runs past the school and into nearby Hood Canal.

Learning about Nick's Lagoon and a little about salmon ecology, students and teachers at Breidablik started wondering what to do with their fish in the aquarium. they also started planning new projects - projects that would leave the salmon in the wild and take the kids OUT of the classroom.

In spring of 2009 they released their salmon in a more appropriate location within the watershed of the hatchery of origin. This was in Puget Sound, not Hood Canal. We also spent a day netting Jump Off Joe Creek and the shallows of Hood Canal at its mouth. Way too much fun, the kids soon became expert at handling the seine and at identifying fish.

We discoverd that Jump Off Joe already had a nice population of a small salmon most commonly called Cutthroat Trout. There is a good chance the cutthroat would have loved to see the salmon in the classroom dumped into their creek since cutthroat are predators of juvenile fish. Chances are good that the stream is too small to support other salmon species, but time will tell as we get to know the creek better by visiting it on a regular schedule, just as we did at Nick's Lagoon.


Any trout fisher will tell you that the Snake River is pretty much heaven. I get to fish the river fairly often, especially when visiting Wilson Elementary in Wilson, Wyoming. On my first author stop we took the fifth graders down to the big river and netted along side channels and along braids where it was safe to be in water with kids dragging a seine.

We worked on a Big Book (see my website) during that time and talked about doing more with the kids outside. The netting experience was what inspired our next adventure and offers a wonderful example for many schools around the country.

There's a tiny creek within walking distance of the school. Having the Snake River nearby more or less makes this piece of water invisible to anyone. Anyone, that is, other than a kid.

We visited this tiny Kid Creek with all the kids, netting with seine and hand held dip nets. The result? Inspired writing and art and a wealth of new knowledge about the stream, its history, and its future. The local land trust is now looking into ways of treating the stream and for sure, Wilson has found an outdoor learning lab right in their own backyard.


I can say that much of what I've done and will do with kids on waters all started with school visits in Ohio. I've taken several thousand kids seining in the Scioto, Darby, and other streams as well as into many ponds. The best of these projects is now connecting schools as we attempt to help kids see the connections in the Scioto/Ohio River Watershed.

Kids at Wyandot Elementary and St Brigid, both in Dublin have been doing some of the most creative watershed work. We started by seining in ponds on both school grounds. After a few years of documenting fish, invertebrates, and water quality in these headwater ponds, we took an ambitious approach in the spring of 2009.

Older kids can cover more ground than little ones and middle schoolers at St Brigid were up to the task of following a tributary to Indian Run Creek, itself a tributary to the Scioto. We followed the little creek, netting all the way, troubled by a lack of water and an abundance of litter. But we eventually traced the path of the creek all the way to its connection with Indian Run. And when we did, we looked upstream and there, in plain view was Wyandot Elementary School! We had followed the water and connected the dots to a partnering school.

Now, the two schools can compare notes on fish, water quality, and the many art and writing projects they have done related to the stream studies. Better yet, they can move on up and downstream to find ways of improving the water quality and connect with other schools in their watershed.

Each of the examples are at schools with streams within walking distance of the building. I'm often asked what to do during a school visit and I invariably ask if a stream flows nearby. Thanks to the examples of schools like Wilson, Wyandot, Breidablik, St Brigid, and others, I can point to some great ways schools use the experience. I know teachers take this learning back into the classroom. My job is to take the kids OUT of the classroom and definitely, to leave the salmon where they belong --- in a stream where we can watch over their well being.

KINDERGARTEN

Kids keep me inspired, but after many years working with them, it is the Kindergarteners who keep me coming back to schools to learn with them.

The photo above was taken just after several kindergarteners waded into the shallows of Indian Run Creek. Wearing those cute little lady bug boots and armed with tiny nets, several of them caught crayfish. Some even landed dazzling Rainbow Darters, some of the most beautiful fish on the planet. But the fish and "lobsters" weren't the prize that day.

If you look closely, you can see this young man proudly showing off his catch - a golf ball. He was so excited and well he should be. He found something he could take home. A treasure he will remember long after the thrill of scooping up a fish is forgotten.

I could fill the eworld with kstories. Here are a couple of my favorites.

When I first started working in schools, I'd often circle up the kids in the library and show some slides of animals I work with in the wild. At the time of a visit to an Olympia, Washington school, I'd just finished a book about geese. I told the kids about how some geese were super parents and some were not so great. In fact, some geese readily give up their kids to other adults.

One of the boys in the kindergarten class I was talking with stood up when I was finished and all the other kids turned to him and immediately became very quiet. Apparently, they were used to his presence. His story telling abilities. His command of the room. He very politely asked if he could share a story about a bird. It was an Australian myth about how the birds got their colors. Young Rem kept us, me especially, in awe as he wove the tale so well and so long I completely forgot I was listening to a five year old. He could just as well have been 85.

On completing his story, Rem was appointed to take me to another class to continue my day in the building. The other kindergarteners went back to their room and when we got into the hall, Rem shook my sleeve and asked me to stop.

He looked up and down the hall to make sure no one was in sight. "They don't know what to do with me here," he said, still looking up and down the hallway.

"They put me in fifth grade for math. Fourth grade is for social studies. Third grade I go to sometimes too."

He added that he was a kindergartener, so obsiously, he had to spend time in kindergarten.

Then, with a twinkle in his eye, Rem told me the greater truth of his situation, "What I really like is First Grade because I really like First Grade Girls!!!"


I met another genius last spring. Her name is Evelyn. I spent a little time with her and her classmates during a bit of a break during a day of field trips and in building celebration of Earth Day.

I do this thing with kids that is probably my most popular activity. It comes up at lots of moments, especially when we are making books together. I'll look at what they are writing about or listen to them as they trouble over an illustration. If asked to draw something, instead, I carve an eraser into a small stamp so they can use the image over and over. I sometimes get lumpy bumpy packages in the mail filled with an entire classroom, or even an entire school's worth of erasers awaiting carving into dolphins, dogs, and seahorses.

Evelyn watched that day as I started carving stamps for kids. Since it was spring, a lot of the kids wanted flowers. They're fun to carve and we were on a roll with enough flowers to make a nice wildflower illustration.

Evelyn kept watching and talking about possible stamps for her ideas. After much thought, she announced, "An olive. Olives are plants. I'd like an olive."

I carved her an olive, the first one I'd ever done. Not many kindergarteners, when given the choice of rubber stamps would give up the chance of having a penguin or tulip and go to the idea of an olive. But Evelyn wasn't finished thinking this over.

She stamped the olive, saw it was nice and politely offered it to a friend who gladly accepted it, saying the olive would look nice with her flowers.

Olive skrinkled up her face and scratched her head a bit before letting me know, "A jar of Olive Oil. That's what I want, a jar of Olive Oil!"

I've made, conservatively, 5,000 rubber stamps for kids and adults. The range of images is actually quite narrow and mostly includes fish, bears, horses, penguins, whales, dolphins.......I never had so much fun attempting to carve the details into a stamp. Evelyn coached me as we designed the label and foil for the cap. A jar of olive oil on a pink pearl eraser. Who'd imagine that. Evelyn.

You can read about Evelyn at my other blog site. She is the person responsible for asking me a list of questions that helped form much of our journey to Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in June 2009. She is the inspiration for Project Soar and made it possible to encourage people from around the world to send sand samples to me for close looks at plastics gone micro along our ocean shores.

I'm told by Evelyn's teachers that instead of walking straight down the halls of her school, she walks sideways. She scans the walls as she walks, taking in all information. I hope to work with her again in the near future and look forward to what wondrous things she does for the world.

Kindergarteners can always make me laugh. They can always come up with the goofiest stories. But I think we really need to listen to them closely so as not to miss those few out there with a lot to say, a lot to pay attention to. One thing is for sure. They are taking in so much more information than any of us could ever imagine. Since the little buggers are so new to the world, they might just find the ways to make it better.

If you have a kindergarten story, please add a comment here!

The Most Beautiful Place on Earth

Aspens along the Snake River sooth most souls. This photo was taken as I made my way down river to visit Wilson Elementary in Wilson, Wyoming. One of my all time favorite schools, it is home to a supportive staff and group of parents as well as a bunch of kids surrounded by some of the most spectacular wilderness remaining in our country. It is easy to walk from the school and see a moose, catch trout, and even see a cougar or grizzly.

Is Wilson, Wyoming and the Greater Yellowstone/Grand Teton area the most beautiful on earth?

My friend Trevor Atkins thinks we should ask kids to take a look around and see how each and every one of them lives in the most beautiful place. He and I have vowed to make this idea a goal in the coming school year --- to help kids see the local beauty and to help in the restoration of places in need of rekindling ancient natural features.

My focus in this is not all that different from how I've viewed previous school years. I try to encourage kids to love their surroundings by taking them out to small streams, ponds, and shorelines. We net fish and other water life and look closely at the beauty in nature.

Water. In Hawaiian, the word is Wai. Recognizing the depth of its importance, Hawaiians also know the word Wai to mean Wealth.....What are we without water. No wealth could sustain without the most precious of all earth's resources.

I love to do this one simple thing, especially when far from the sea. Take a child by the hand and lead him or her to a tiny stream. Lean down and touch the water, then let them know where it flows, asking if they are aware of the path that water takes, all the way into the mouth of whales in distant seas. There is instant magic.

Netting fish, observing invertebrates, and taking water quality measurements are all good science. As a biologist, I can help schools set up watershed projects with this science at its heart. I've learned to bring soulful art projects into this mix and am always searching for new ways to help kids express themselves through art and writing.

If you teach, ask for information about Trevor's projects in Hawaii and my projects there and on the mainland, as well as in other countries. I'll set up projects that can include art and writing contests to see just who does have the Most Beautiful Place on Earth as their school ground, home, or community.

What makes a place so beautiful. The golden aspen leaves make it easy for all to see. But if you go out into a small stream almost anywhere in America, I know you will find a way to gaze into something far more beautiful and some place you can visit each and every day. We owe it to all our kids to find that place and to help them protect or restore its special beauty.

To help find connections in these places, I continue to work to bring schools together, up and down streams, especially along the Scioto and Ohio River in Ohio; Snake River in Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon and Washington; and along coastal reaches of the Salish Sea in Washington.

Get in touch to connect with these and other projects.