29 Aug Smokey bear? That’s my boss!
During my time here, I’ve mostly worked with what we loosely call our “natural resources department”- aka our botanist, wildlife biologist, and biological science technicians. That experience has been wonderful but I also have passion for nature education and outreach which I wanted to pursue while working at this unit. To that end, I’ve also worked a bit here and there with our recreation department, especially with our interpretive field rangers. For this blog post, I’ll discuss what that has looked like.
Our field rangers do an incredible job at working with partners, engaging the public, and connecting people with nature. They participate in dozens of events over the course of the summer including but not limited to community events, school field trips, guided hikes, etc. I participated in a few of these events which was a blast! I attended Smokey’s 80th birthday party which we hosted at the Gorge Discovery Center, a local museum, where we taught the community about the importance of wildfire prevention. About a week after that, I helped table at “PCT Days”, a hiking, backpacking, and stewardship festival which is held at Cascade Locks, the largest town directly on the Pacific Crest Trail. We connected with over 1400 people during the two-day festival! One of my favorite events that I participated in was the Columbia River Gorge Water Jam, where students from the Washington side of the gorge came together to learn more about salmon, critical habitat, and water conservation at Spring Creek National Fish Hatchery.
More recently, I’ve gotten the chance to plan an event from beginning to finish, rather than just coming in at the end to help with tabling. It all started a few months ago, when I asked around to see if we hosted any events with BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) groups. The answer was yes – we worked closely with several local organizations to provide support, capacity, and environmental education. However, we only worked with smaller local organizations, rather than some of the larger ones in Portland. While I think it’s crucial to connect with and support folks who live in the gorge, it seemed like a missed opportunity not to have programming or partnerships with organizations in the much-more-diverse neighboring Portland. And it just so happened that I already heard of an incredible organization called PDX People of Color Outdoors (POCO). This nonprofit that strengthens BIPOC connections to nature by hosting outdoors events. I thought that it could be exciting to connect with POCO and offer to host an outdoor event with them, host an outdoor skills clinic with them, or provide support in another capacity. I proposed this plan to our unit’s interpretive specialist who was all onboard for the idea. Once I got the green light to go ahead, I reached out to POCO to inquire about their interest. I was delighted to hear that they were just as excited about working with us as we were about working with them! We promptly set up a meeting and planned our first event together. We are planning to lead a guided hike to Gillette Lake with 12 people in mid-September. I’ll be working with two field rangers to plan the guided hike – a prospect which I’m excited about since I’ve never planned an interpretive hike before.
Overall, I’m grateful for the opportunity to pursue the many topics that interest me, including natural resources and diversity in nature-based recreation. And I’m thrilled to have helped start a relationship between our unit and PDX People of Color Outdoors. I hope that we can continue to connect with historically underserved groups both in the gorge and in Portland.
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