I’m pleased to introduce the 25 people who formed the fall 2024 learning community of Wenatchee Naturalists. We traveled the Wenatchee, Entitat, and Columbia River watersheds together on field trips. We meet for 12 weeks and explored plants, animals, and habitats, often led by a guest scientist.
With botanist and artist, Olivia Schilling, we learned basic nature journaling art techniques to use in the field. Each person selected a field site to visit weekly and to practice nature journaling.
At our final class, everyone shared a personal project. View this slideshow to see each person, and their end-of-class presentation.
Beth visited Peshastin Pinnacles, Judy ‘s site was Blackbird Island & Enchantment Park, and Laurie and her puppy explored Saddle Rock. Each read-aloud their personal essay, sharing insights and experiences that resulted from weekly visits.
Six class members focused on the Icicle River watershed for field sites. Jack explored Sam Hill, Connie roamed Leavenworth, and Jeremy frequented the Ski Hill. with a focus on lichens. He quipped that he could carry in the boulders that served as habitat for many more kinds of lichens!
Nate took along his camera and journal to the upper Enchantment basin and studied subalpine larch.
Nicole and Sophia co-created a video featuring the four-seasons of nature at the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery, along Icicle River.
Two class members dove deep and focused on their home properties for study and journaling. Leslie created an illustrated brief of history of Camas Meadows, and Staci shared excerpts from her compiled research of native plants and insects in her native plant landscaping.
Chris has a favorite camping spot in the nearby Cascades, and he encouraged us all to hand-pull weeds – knapweeds – as he does each times he camps. Another Chris shared his research about brown-headed cowbirds, who are in the “weedy” category of birds.
Several class members focused on learning our native conifers. Staci Larsen sketched several featurng ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir in her journal.
Bob and Pat collected and identified samples near Lake Wenatchee for a holiday wreath.
Leah is a map-maker by trade, and she created a map of four conifer species in the Lake Wenatchee-White River area. She focused on four of our field trip stops where we first encountered these trees.
Dania and Cindy both explore how Indigenous Peoples used plants they encountered at field sites. Dania pulled interesting facts from a regional plant field guide, and Cindy learned from a friend about important plant fibers she saw at Horan Natural Area.
Karen spoke her native Klamath language words for plants and animals we learned about in our class. Listen to her recording here.
Andrew shared a non-fiction essay about how we can take action on Climate Change, saying “The guide offers hope and ideas. It is about what each of us might do. It is written in a connected “waterfall” style that you can pick up at any point.
Tod and Suzanne teamed up to visit the Leavenworth Fish Hatchery as their field site, and focused on watercolor nature journaling – see Tod’s photo collection here. Catherine used her stained-glass artisan skills to create two native neo-tropical songbirds who will arrive in spring to nest and rear young.
High School biology teacher Brooke, shared how she had developed lessons based on our class topics, and successfully engaged her students using hands-on labs, guest speakers, and field trips.
Dana’s project was to invite everyone to join her in continued community learning as naturalists. Be sure to look at the “Meet the Class of 2024” slideshow to see collective creativity and unique perspectives of everyone in our class. Elisa and I were honored to be teachers and learners alongside of our engaged naturalists.
The Wenatchee Naturalist program mission is to cultivate awareness, understanding, and stewardship of the Wenatchee River region by developing an active corps of well-informed community volunteers. I look forward to seeing how the class of 2024 contributes as conservation volunteers in our region in the future.
We look forward to seeing you out in the watershed!
