MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – Four elementary schools sent a total of 160 fourth graders to a natural setting by Putah Creek last Tuesday, May 8, for an “In the Creek Day” to learn about the environment and how to take care of it.
Coyote Valley Elementary sent three classes to the event, and Lake County International Charter School, Cobb and Minnie Cannon each sent one.
What these four schools have in common is that they all lie in the Upper Putah Creek watershed, which, as these children learned, is all the land from which water drains into Upper Putah Creek.
That’s the land that has been looked after by the Upper Putah Creek Stewardship (UPCS) since the nonprofit organization was formed in 1996.
Almost every year since then, it has organized In the Creek Day – a springtime event which gives children demonstrations of various aspects of the environment and how to be good stewards.
Organizers of the event in its early days included by Helen Whitney, Bill Reed, Chris Simon and Dwight Holford. After a one-year hiatus, Holford saw to it that the tradition was reinstituted this year.
Educators were Jeff Tunnell of the Bureau of Land Management, who taught about fire safety; Kake O’Donnell and volunteer Joe Evans from the Natural Resources Conservation Service Lakeport office, who gave demonstrations related to soils; Larry Ray, president of the UPCS, who covered botany; Dean Enderlin, formerly chief geologist at the McLaughlin Mine, who led a creek side look at rocks; and Carrieann Lopez, an environmental scientist in the North Coast district of the State of California Water Board, who offered insights into sources of water pollution.
Nelsy, Trinity and Lucas of Coyote Valley Elementary all liked the creekside geology with Dean Enderlin best.
“You got to look at different types, and look at crystals inside it,” said Trinity about the rocks she found along the creek.
“I liked when we got to find rocks and he helped us identify them,” said Lucas, adding that he also learned about “fire safety and pollution.”
Nelsy liked that she could “find our own rocks.”
She learned that “there are three types of different rocks: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic” and that important things to take care of in the environment are “water, soil, air.”
The event took place along Putah Creek, just behind Middletown High’s football field on property generously offered for the event by Michael Browning.