I participated in Project AWARE again this year, my eighth year for the nine-year history of the week-long event. In addition to participating with my wife Peg in paddling a canoe down the river to pick up trash, I offered guided nature walks in the evening to acquaint folks with the flora, fauna, and places we encountered along the way. Many educational programs are integrated into the AWARE experience, but it is best known for its tremendous success in cleaning rivers of unsightly and unnatural accumulations of trash ranging from scattered bits of plastic to large deposits of rusty metal.
 |
| Something lies beneath... |
 |
| Groping for the bottom edge |
 |
| Tug of war with embedded junk |
A typical day begins with paddling away from the launch site while scanning the shoreline for any unnatural objects. Sometimes they are obvious as heaps of junk on the banks but often their presence is revealed only by glimpses of submerged shapes. Spotting junk triggers a quick turnaround of the canoe, wading into the flowing water to evaluate the size of the job, and - if large - beckoning additional paddlers to the challenge. A team of people quickly materializes and sets to working probing, prodding, pulling, and pushing the junk whose years-long second career of obstructing the riverbed is about to end. After a flurry of idea-hatching, the group settles on a plan and gets to work.
 |
| Loading big junk onto "canoemarans" for paddling to take-out point... no trash (well, almost no trash) is too big... |
 |
| ...or too small! |
Shovels, ropes, helpful hands and strong backs soon extricate the junk from the river. It is then loaded onto a fleet of waiting canoes, each accepting their share of the bounty and then whisking away toward a downstream drop-off point. Some pieces of junk are far too large for a single canoe, but this problem is resolved by lashing two canoes together to form a primitive, but incredibly stable catamaran that is guided downstream by its foursome paddlers.
 |
| Part of one day's haul |
At the drop-off points, offloaded junk quickly grows to enormous piles sorted by material. Tires here, metal there, with still other subsets for cans, bottles, plastic, and miscellaneous others. A goal of Project AWARE is not simply to remove junk from the river for re-deposit in a landfill, but to reclaim and recycle as much of the material as possible.
After finishing a day of paddling and trash-removing, volunteers camp overnight along the river; this year, camping was provided by the Fayette County Conservation Board at Gouldsburg Park and Gilbertson Park, by the City of Elkader at its municipal park, and by the Clayton County Conservation Board at Motor Mill Park and Osborne Park. Camaraderie developed during the day and from previous years extends into the campground. It's like sharing a giant campsite with a hundred of your closest friends!
After finishing a day of paddling and trash-removing, volunteers camp overnight along the river; this year, camping was provided by the Fayette County Conservation Board at Gouldsburg Park and Gilbertson Park, by the City of Elkader at its municipal park, and by the Clayton County Conservation Board at Motor Mill Park and Osborne Park. Camaraderie developed during the day and from previous years extends into the campground. It's like sharing a giant campsite with a hundred of your closest friends!
Reminders that we are moving through a natural habitat abound. Deer, muskrats, eagles, kingfishers, herons, sandpipers, waxwings, fish, mussels, crayfish, dobsonflies, cottonwoods, boxelders, and sedges are among the most obvious. Many others are bypassed, unrecognized or unseen by the busy paddlers, but that is one of the functions of my evening nature walks: helping eager volunteers learn more about the natural world through which we are passing.
While scouting sites for my evening nature walks one day this week, I discovered a small population of Glade Mallow (Napaea dioica), a state-listed "Species of Special Concern" that inhabits riparian areas in northeast Iowa.
 |
| Glade Mallow |
We also met organisms from the distant past: trilobites, cephalopods, and corals weathered out of 375 million-year old Ordovician rocks bordering the river. Dr. Kata McCarville of Upper Iowa University provided morning orientations about the rocks and fossils we would encounter on each day's upcoming float, prompting us to watch for them as we plucked trash from sandbars, bluffs, and riverbanks. I was fortunate to find a beautiful trilobite fossil as I went ashore for a lunch break on a gravel bar.
 |
| Trilobite preserved in Ordovician mudstone, found on gravel bar. Thanks to geologist Brian Witzke for identfying this as Anataphrus vigilans from the Elgin Member of the Maquoketa Formation |
At the end of the week, Project AWARE had lived up to its name, raising awareness of the beauty and biodiversity of the river, both among participants and observers who watched from bridges, backyards, and boat landings or who saw its story told in newspapers and on televisions. Along the way, its 400 volunteers removed over 600 tires and over 30 tons of junk, letting the water flow over a more completely natural riverbed once again. Future paddlers will glide over a river that is now a bit wilder and more scenic; the river and its wildlife will be appreciated more widely by a public more aware of its values.
Great post, John. Congratulations on what sounds like a pretty satisfying day! I was celebrating a river too Saturday -- marking the 100th anniversary of the St. Croix River Association here in MN. Hope it was a bit cooler where you are, but I doubt it was!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jeffrey! Actually we lucked out with the weather on the river: warm/humid for the first few days followed by pleasantly cool/dry conditions for the rest of the week. The last day was predicted to be very hot/very humid, but a fortuitously timed morning thunderstorm kept it cool for our final half-day. It's been record-breaking heat and humidity ever since. The news just reported that nearby Newton, Iowa had a heat index today of 126!
ReplyDeleteI felt on odd mixture of disgust and admiration as I read this post... It is hard for me to comprehend the dumping of so much crap (and some of it so LARGE!) into such beautiful waterways. I often feel embarrassed for us as a species when I consider such actions. But, then I also felt a tremendous swell of pride and hope that there are people such as yourself and the other AWARE participants that are committed to getting out there and really doing something to make a difference and improve the situation. The fact that every attempt is made to recycle and/or reclaim the waste you collected is all the more impressive!
ReplyDeleteHow lucky for everyone attending to have you prepare and lead nature walk at the end of the day -- a perfect opportunity for education and discovery! Your photos and words do a commendable job of capturing the feel and spirit of the event. I especially loved seeing the fossil that you found (WOW!) and that final photo of the sun (rising?) with the canoe is so very lovely.
A wonderful post... thanks, John!
Thanks, Harsi! Yes, that final photo is indeed of a sunrise.
ReplyDeleteAnother reason to feel optimistic about the trash-in-the-river situation is that most of the metal junk was, judging from its rusty nature and architectural vintage, very old... meaning that no new metal is being dumped. However, the modern problems are pollution from eroded sediment, pesticides, and excess fertilizer associated with an intensively agricultural landscape punctuated with urban runoff... whose chemistry is less visible than junk and impossible to remove with one's hands, no matter how many of us there are! That said, being on the clean-up sensitizes participants to those problems and enables them to apply lessons learned on the river to choose green approaches from everyday consumerism to election cycles.
The Turkey River this year was a real treat because, in contrast to previous rivers in previous years, the watershed was in better shape, generating water clear enough that everyone could actually see their feet... and more easily spot sunken junk.