A field trip to the wetlands
An Earth Day meditation from 10-year-old me
When I found out my fifth-grade class field trip to the wetlands might be cancelled because of rain, I cried. I already had my garbage-bag poncho made and a bag packed with snacks and notebooks—is this the reason I was so invested? I had never been to these wetlands, a state park adjoining the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge, which was perhaps a 45-minute drive from my childhood home in California. I had glimpsed the moist, unassuming expanse of reeds and bunchgrass from the highway, but that was it. Maybe it was the novelty of a field trip I craved.
But I think it was more than this, and I have archival evidence.
Below, in honor of Earth Day, I’ve transcribed my journal entries around the day of the field trip, which wasn’t cancelled after all. Those few hours of marsh stamped themselves in my brain as a waypoint in my relationship with nature—which was already healthy, as you’ll see. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the synapses forged that day helped nudge me into my ecology career.
I thought about including excerpts from a long essay I wrote in college about ecological restoration, for which this field trip, and my later visit as a restoration volunteer, served as a framing device. The essay is full of philosophical musings about nature-culture dualism and how we decide what counts as nature. Case in point: the San Luis wetlands were resurrected in the 1960s from the slate-wipe of agricultural dredging, just a sliver of what used to fill the Central Valley. The Refuge is still heavily and continuously managed as habitat for waterfowl migrating along the Pacific Flyway, endemic tule elk, endangered tiger salamanders and San Joaquin kit foxes, fairy shrimp, and many others. My essay interrogated various philosophers and conservationists about what the intimate human touch means for the value of this place, semantic or otherwise.
Instead of putting you through that (for now), I’ll let my 10-year-old self tell you about the place, and you can draw your own conclusions.
First, here are the original journal pages. Feel free to have a go at my fifth-grade scrawl1, or read the transcribed version below.
Monday, March 6, 2006
We might be able to go tomorrow! I have hope.
We had an easy math test this morning.
We talked about what we would do if we go tomorrow afternoon. If it’s raining in the morning, we probably won’t go.
Please! Pleeease don’t rain!
Tuesday, March 7, 2006
I was really tense, seeing if it would rain, and it did! I was really upset, thinking we wouldn’t go, but we are, and we’re in the bus right now! We’re on our way to Great Valley Grasslands, a state park near Stevinson. We’re in the town, almost there! It’s a small town. I can’t wait! I’m really glad we decided to go.
It’s clearing up.
We’re here! See ya!
This place is amazing! It’s nice and cool, and the view is great.
We’re walking along the San Jauquin (sic) River2, on a gravel levee. There’s also a riparian forest, cottonwood trees with mistletoe. This is my favorite type of thing to do! We stopped and listened for a minute, and it was amazing. We also got to see a place where Indians used to camp. It’s amazing that this whole valley used to be like this, grass and river!
During reflection time, it started to pour, and we were doing art and writing on paper. Taylor Ann and I survived under an umbrella for a while, where my foot went to sleep, almost to the point of being dead (I’m kidding). While under the umbrella, I listed things I saw and heard, wrote about why we must preserve the grasslands, drew a picture of the riparian forest (forest by a river), started a picture of the marshland, drew some creatures that I saw, and wrote a haiku. It’s not really the right subject for a haiku3, but it’s in haiku form.
Here it is:
Grounded
(5) Tender grass sprouts up
(7) from soft, brown, life-giving earth
(5) Insects crawl and peep
****
It’s sort of spur-of-the-moment, amateur, but it’s acceptable.4 It’s about what I saw when I crouched down to the earth.
As soon as we got up to switch places (from river to marsh), the rain trickled almost out. We stood with Mrs. Knispel next to the marsh, until it was time to go to the vernal pools. We walked about a mile and a half (?) until we saw Mr. Sutterly’s class.
The vernal pools were really cool! They were shimmery and mysterious, looking like they were trying to go somewhere. They were pretty big for a pool, small for a pond. They disappear when it heats up. For the time being, they’re filled with life, teeming with life, even though it looks like a puddle.
We looked into a field scope with pool water:
Lots of little critters. Really cool!
We also did another plot study, finding mud and grass. Another activity was identifying (rubber but realistic) scat (poop) with a follow up chart thing. Quite interesting.
It started to sprinkle, so we headed back. The clouds around us, in the distance, were dark, and we could see rain falling from them, which looked like soupy clouds and mist blending and streaming to the ground, but more like one cloud, draining.
By the time we completed the mile ½ walk, it was raining, and we decided to skip visiting the tule elk pens and going back to the classroom to have lunch.
Honestly probably better than my current handwriting
The San Joaquin River, the longest river in the Central Valley of California, gives its name to the valley where the refuge is located, and gives much of its water to agriculture. But it also hosts plenty of wildlife, dammed and diverted as it is. Two of its tributaries, the Stanislaus and the Tuolomne, were my home rivers. Just hearing these names make me melt with nostalgia. I must write about these rivers.
Don’t ask me what I thought haikus were supposed to be about if not this!
Already my own harshest critic…
Thank you for sharing this! Your 10 year old self is a great writer. All of the excitement and wonder comes through in the details she observes.
I love that 10-year-old-Anne was already YOU! 😍