It’s late March in Santa Fe: overcast, drizzly, cold. It will snow tonight. Along the river, the barest hint of green shows at the feet of the grasses. The trees rattle, black and gray. Mid-morning: I have a truck full of 8th grade girls and I think, “Okay, let’s work for twenty minutes, and then we’ll go home.”
This class has been coming to the river for three years; they have overseen the removal of 14,000 Russian olive trees. We want to know what impact this work will have on water levels, habitat, and the plants and animals that live here. But today, the weather is miserable, and I am not looking forward to the complaints that will issue from my 8th grade girls as we wade into the wet, shivery day.
In collaboration with many groups, including River Source and the Santa Fe Girls’ School, I run a small restoration project in La Cieneguilla. We call our program Project PRESERVE—Protecting the River Environment, Stopping Erosion and Restoring the Vital Ecology. Every Thursday, I take my classes to the river.
In the 6th grade we learn about rocks and soils; we study erosion and stream flow. We dig holes. We talk about sediment and flood plains and dirt. We think about landform, and history in geologic terms.
In 7th grade we learn about all the species that live on our river. We collect bugs and fish; we watch birds; we look for tracks; we collect plants for our herbarium; we peek into holes. We walk across habitats, biomes and ecotones, touching them, surveying. We get very muddy. We collect ground water and streamflow data.
The 8th grade is the Board of Directors. They decide what projects to initiate each year and they document our work. We study water chemistry; we learn about pollution and nutrient cycles and we make small documentary films. We talk about community and ethics and conflict resolution.
Each class helps with fence repair, bridge building, well digging, tree planting, lopping and spraying with vinegar to keep the Russian olives from coming back—perfect work for middle school students.
We return every week to the same small piece of land. Slowly, the place reveals itself to us, its stories. And we make our own stories there. It is the way we remember, the way we teach. Stories remind us who we are and why we do what we do. They remind us to return. In our six years, we have made some good stories.
There is the tale of the place Aysia fell out of a tree, and the place Caitlyn got stuck to her hips in mud, and the place Erin went swimming, intentionally, of course. There is the time of the icebergs in the river, and icicles growing from the tips of the grasses, and minnows frozen in solid pools. There is the story of using willow sticks to measure groundwater because the beeper was broken.
We have stories of a roadrunner, of a great blue heron and the ibises, and of the day we found the dead beaver.
But my favorite small story comes from the day shortly after all the Russian olives had been pulled. It is a dramatic thing to see a tree yanked out of the ground, even if it is an invasive species. There is a shocking violence to it, and we felt the moral dilemma. Who were we to remove these living beings that were simply doing what they do best?
The land looked extraordinarily different: torn, disturbed. We arrived with the 8th grade and decided that we needed to mark the change, to explore, and not to work. The girls dispersed, and my co-teacher, Mary Alice Trujillo, and I were left to our own devices. We walked and we told stories about childhood and work. We talked about sensibility and how a person gets it. Catholic nuns appeared in the conversation, along with tractors and schools and coyotes. We talked about moral decisions and we wandered amongst the piles of newly dead Russian olives until we came to the few cottonwoods now standing alone and Mary Alice said, “I think they have breathing room now ”—as if “breathing room” were the answer to everything: better teaching, better learning, a sense of place, stewardship, community.
One group of girls sat together talking in the shade of a newfound cottonwood; their hands were busy with the grasses and sticks, as if they were weaving, and then another group approached: “We found a secret cave we’ve never seen before! A cliff face and a perfect place to sit above the water!” Breathing room to see and feel a place for what it truly is.
Something changes when we spend time on the land, working, playing, learning. Something takes hold. My students have made this place their own.
I knew it for sure on a cold and miserable day in March. We arrived and I had to get something out of the truck. When I looked up, the girls were already gone, through the gate, into the mud and rain without a moment’s hesitation, without a single complaint, and I realized, truly, this is what sustainability means: Mary Alice and I were irrelevant. These kids know what to do. They are not daunted or intimidated by mud, rain, cold, ice, marsh, bugs, snakes, thorns, rocks, tools, or work.
This is their program, their river.
This essay was first published in Sustainable Santa Fe: A Resource Guide: 110-111, Santa Fe, New Mexico: Earth Care, 2011.
William S. Barnes 