StreamWatch

The creek in the county park downstream of my preserve

Our land trust is partnering with the watershed association that champions the environmental quality of the stream that drains the land to our southwest.  Last evening, our two organizations convened a joint training session for prospective stream monitoring volunteers at the county park downstream of my preserve.

Classroom training

About 20 people showed up for the training, which began with a PowerPoint introduction to the monitoring protocol.

Choosing a monitoring site

Then the volunteers split up between the two watersheds to choose their monitoring sites.

Creekside fieldwork.  The prominent outcrop in the background is called Council Rock.

Finally, we moved to the bank of the creek to apply the concepts introduced in the PowerPoint presentation to the "real world."  By then, the sun had started to set.

The volunteers were asked to pledge to monitor their section of the creek once a month - a two-hour commitment.  Everyone who attended was enthusiastic and seemed willing to commit more than two hours each month.

A riffle at sunset

Water Images and Vacation Plans

My artist friend passed along two more images, this time of streams in one of the area's city parks. She's got an "eye" that I can appreciate, and I'm a sucker for water images.


On another topic, my wife and I are planning an 11-day trip to western New Mexico in mid-May. We'll be staying at a gay-owned bed-and-breakfast outside Gallup, New Mexico. (We're not staying there specifically because it's gay-owned; we're staying there because of convenience and because it's the only bed-and-breakfast for many, many miles around. We plan to visit Chaco Canyon National Historical Park (our main reason for staying near Gallup), several other lesser-known cultural and natural attractions, plus Gallup and Zuni Pueblo to shop for Southwest Native American crafts.

From the Gallup area, we'll move south to Silver City where we'll spend some time at The Nature Conservancy's Bear Mountain Lodge birding, hiking, and visiting more Anasazi sites in and around the Gila Wilderness.

We've been to northern New Mexico (i.e., Santa Fe, Taos, Bandalier National Monument, Pecos Wilderness), and southeastern New Mexico (Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns National Parks, Ruidoso, White Sands National Monument, and Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge), so this trip should fill-out our New Mexico dance card with most of the best remaining natural and cultural attractions. We've wanted to visit Chaco Canyon especially for a long time now.