2019 People of the Big River Field Class

Blog #13 Thursday. Today was our last day camping with The People of the Big River. We camped at Yachats North (San Marin), Oregon. I was able to see the sunset for the first time and it was simply beautiful. It happens faster than you can imagine, and for a moment I was able to see the sun fall slowly behind the waves of the ocean. I can’t describe in words how it felt but this poem might: “HEARTWORK Each day is born with a sunrise and ends in a sunset, the same way we open our eyes to see the light,  and close them to hear the dark. You have no control over how your story begins or ends. But by now, you should know that all things have an ending. Every spark returns to darkness. Every sound returns to silence. And every flower returns to sleep with the earth. The journey of the sun and the moon is predictable. But yours is your ultimate ART.”  ―  Suzy Kassem

Blog #12 Klamath Tribes’ Aquatics Program Today we talked about a general overview of the Klamath River Basin setting, what it looks like, the geography, and a bit about the species that are important biologically and from a cultural perspective as well. The Klamath River Basin, which is one of two river systems that cut through the Cascade Range. They are the Colombia and Klamath rivers. We talked about The Klamath Basin Project (1906) when settlers began to arrive in the region, eager to raise crops and livestock. It was in 1902 when President Theodore Roosevelt signed the National Reclamation Act, which made extensive agriculture in the upper Klamath Basin possible by authorizing the reclamation of swamps and lakes to increase irrigable acreage. In other words, congress said take this wasted, awful land and turn it into something useful. They didn’t mind that there were people already using it, but the decision was made to get rid of these lakes. The two lakes used to be 5-6

Blog #11 Chiloquin Today we met with Dr. Alex G, an environmental scientist for 23 years; a graduate from Oregon State University with a degree in wildlife and fisheries. He’s been working for the Klamath Tribes: Modoc, Klamath, and Yahooskin. We walked up to a small spring called Kirks Springs which is located in the middle of the Williamson River (Oregon). This river is sort of a strange one because there’s a top of the river where the river just pours out of the ground like a spring and then pours into a wetland, disappears, and reappears 30 miles south. There must be a lava tube that collects the water and restarts the river. During our hike, we stopped to talk about the ponderosa pine trees. The trees had these black marks on it, which means that they have grown big enough to become immune to fire. They auto prune themselves; literally drop the branches off that the fire can get to, biologically, so that the fire can’t get into the crown and cause what they call a crown fi

Blog #10 Monday.  Service Today we went out to do two service projects: restoration project at the wetland and ponderosa pine restoration. Our first project was supported by three individuals. Tom a biologist for the forest service at Deschutes National Forest, Trent, a national r esources intern, and Peter a projects manager for the restoration projects. The river we worked on is the Deschutes River, and from it, we focused on the wetland with standing water where there are some invasive species, reed canary grass, that we pulled out to allow the Native wetland vegetation to grow and increase its density. While being in the water we stacked the reed canary grass on the kayaks, got it to shore, and put it on the pickup truck to dispose of it. The wetland is about 65 acres in size. It was interesting to learn that for the last 90 years the river couldn’t get through there because of a burn constructed along the river's edge. The history of this place goes way back, there are ma

Blog #9 Sunday. Generous people. Today we had a great time at generous people’s home. They offered to provide lunch and dinner for us and to use their home to blog some more and we appreciate them for that. It is not about today that I will be blogging about but rather about my overall experience so far about the trip. I was asked what have a learned so far during this trip, and I know that everyone’s answers are different because they came for different reasons. The reason I came to this trip was to learn about the Native Americans culture and their ways of health in regards to their culture and how it relates to what I know about nursing. We haven’t directly met or talked specifically about their believes in health and ways of healing, however, I feel we have had sufficient dialogue to understand what it is that matters to them, what their concerns are, and how it can relate to the nursing profession. When I mean nursing profession I mean our knowledge and our considerations

Blog #8 Saturday. Reflect. 0 As I decided to write this blog, I reflected on the importance of what we did on this day: setting up Trail cameras and going to Little Lava Lake. Setting up trail cameras is a project that we do to see what kind of wildlife is around our area during the time of our camping trip. Even though we have on caught a squirrel and a moth on camera, we know that there are other animals such as Bears, Bald eagles, Elk and Deer, and even Coyotes. While we looked for our locations we made sure to look for animals tracks, feces, feathers, or anything that would indicate living animals. We also marked our location coordinates and described of the location. The way that theses trail cameras are triggered is by movements and they also have night vision. After setting up the cameras we blogged a bit more and then decided to go to the lake. The lake has a beautiful scene and had many docking stations around. We simple got in the water and swam for a