Backcountry Review Issue No. 4

Backcountry Review Live free and transcend

Issue no. 4

OVER THE HILLS

Ian Kerr conquers a century.

A Week Without Tech Oregon Trail Guide Into the Caves

page eight

Oregon Trail Guide page twenty two

Carrying Home page thirty

An Urban Garden page thirty eight

Cottonwood School page forty eight

When I Run page fifty four

Welcome To The Caves Springfield High’s Miller Integrated Nature Experience gives students a look at Oregon they may never see otherwise. The program combines nature writing, Oregon geography, leadership, and exploration, while providing a foundation for environmental consciousness and stewardship.

Ian Kerr

Backcountry Review STAFF

Editors-In-Chief EMMA BABCOCK RUBY LOHNE KILEY McCURRY Copy Editors CATHERINE OSWALT ELIZABETH TODD News Editor BENEDICTO PENALOZABETANCOURT Feature Editor EMILEE DALEY Managing Editor CICELY TRAVERTINI Sportswriter JESUS GOMEZ Staff Writers GABRIEL COOPER DAWN HARRISON IAN KERR ESSENCE ROY EMELIA SHERMAN OSCAR SIGALA ELKE VON MERCK Creative Directors CODY FULLER DARREL HARRISON Designers FATIMA BARBOSA ANTWANE ABRON-HYLTON BENJIMAN WALSH Videographer HANNAH WEST Photo Editor CHAZ STAFFORD Web Editor KADON ENGLE Social Media JESSRY SMITH Public Relations KALEB DAVIS Adviser IVAN MILLER

MAKING BACKCOUNTRY: A S T A F F NO T E

Emma Babcock Managing editor Cicely Travertini interviews local outdoor legend Roger Bailey at the Eugene River House.

By Cicely Travertini

O

n Monday April 30, I interviewed Roger Bailey from the Eugene River House. After 32 years of taking kids on wild expeditions, Bailey is retiring. Through many years of work for the River House and numerous personal expeditions, Bailey has learned, and taught, many useful life lessons. He emphasizes the importance of being present. Not present as in physically presenting yourself in nature, but being there mentally and emotionally, creating a peaceful mind and open heart. Bailey firmly suggests, “if you’re present in the moment you’re going to experience the outdoors differently.”

The same can be said about the Miller Integrated Nature Experience (MINE) at Springfield High School.

Like Bailey, adviser Ivan Miller takes kids out into the community and on crazy adventures. Miller has students write in journals, reflecting on their time in the outdoors. This activity can take many turns, but more often than not it turns into an in-depth reflection of themselves and what they are feeling in a serene, peaceful environment. These pieces are later shared through a community-building activity in a classroom setting. This provides a safe territory for students to bond and come together as a support system.

Bailey feels a support system is important. He exclaims, “this [River House] program saves lives.”

Going out and escaping the hardships one faces day to day is an undeniably amazing opportunity, but can prove hard to come by. However, these local programs create opportunities for diverse populations. As for MINE, the outdoor experience is fused with journalistic learning where students from all backgrounds can express themselves through their writing. This simple task of pursuing what you are passionate about inspires some and even saves others.

Much like Bailey stated, whether coming together in the outdoors or putting together stories and design packages to create a magazine in class, students develop a team-oriented mindset and build a strong sense of pride. Bailey says, “working within a group or a team that all supports what you are doing, supports the mission whether that’s getting down the river, or climbing the mountain, or sailing across an ocean, you learn how to trust and ask for help and be a leader, but also be a follower and those are all things we don’t often have the opportunity to do in our everyday lives. We are pigeonholed in certain tracks as workers or students, as parents, sisters or brothers, so in the outdoors you get to work kind of outside those boundaries.”

Those boundaries are often hiked across in the MINE program. In MINE, we travel off path and discover what we are interested in. The only expectations: be honest, be passionate, and meet deadlines. Beyond the backpacking trips and wild expeditions, we use life skills and apply them to our learning. We learn to survive. After leaving this class we will have gained community connections, communication skills, and the ability to step up when the team needs you.

5

ThE Art of

Ascension

B

ouldering proves that you can do something seemingly impossible.

Michael Hudson loves the feeling of success that comes with ascending walls. He defines bouldering as “a condensed problem that takes an intense effort near or beyond your perceived limit.”

Over the years, Hudson has met many people with similar experiences and passions, one being Phil Morton. Even though rock climbing is historically a very dangerous sport, the only thing Morton is afraid of is not climbing enough.

Morton went to an indoor rock gym in Japan more than 10 years ago, fell into the climbing community, and in turn met Hudson. Hudson also met Jordan Vachal, a skilled climber and master craftsmen.

With the experience, passion, and skill shared by the three companions, they aspired to create a place for people of all backgrounds to come together to feel the accomplishment that comes with scaling walls. Elevation, an 18,000square-foot rock gym in Eugene, was created and feeds the local climbing community.

For Morton and fellow climbers, climbing is so much more than ascending walls—it’s a way of life. The magic of an indoor gym is that it creates a place where lots of climbers, experienced and non-experienced, come together to simply ascend.

By Ian Kerr

6

Get in touch with your wild side and take a closer look into some local trails just outside your backdoor.

Benjiman Walsh

9

Hobbit Beach Mt. Scott The highlight of Crater Lake National Park, Mt. Scott Trail leads through open pumice fields to the highest peak in the park. The trail is a gradual ascent 2.5 miles up, going from 7,680 to 8,832 feet. The summit alone is a worthwhile escapade.

At the top there is a beautiful scenic view of the 1,949-foot deep lake, with Wizard and Phantom Ship Islands pristinely jutting out of the water.

Established in 1902, the park has become an important part of Oregon’s geographical identity.

It’s a short, simple trail named Hobbit because it puts hikers in the perspective of J.R.R. Tolkien’s mischievous and short Hobbits. Due to the sunken nature of the trail, most folks shrink a couple feet. The half mile walk to the beach is downhill, leading to an expansive hidden beach.

Parking is limited to a small space along Highway 101. Just North of Heceta Head Lighthouse, Hobbit Beach captures the beauty of the Oregon coast. You’ll want to pack for a picnic and stay awhile.

Proxy Falls Hike through changing scenery ranging from rigid volcanic rock fields to soothing old growth forest. The popular Proxy Falls Trail, located near Blue River, circles you past two large waterfalls and spits you back out onto the road.

Carved out by a glacier 6,000 years ago, Lower Proxy screams jaw-dropping magnificence with its formidable height of 226 feet. It splits into two gorgeous streams that cascade down a moss-caked rock face. Neighboring Upper Proxy magically makes an abrupt vanishment into a cavern in the ground and emerges miles downstream. The hike itself is a 1.6-mile excursion, however, if Highway 242 is closed before the trailhead in the winter, you will need to hike in on the road for approximately two miles.

Parker Falls About 29 miles outside Cottage Grove, past Lake Dorena, Parker Falls is an intermediate-level there-and-back trail, stretching 1.6 miles. The trail takes you to several scenic views such as waterfalls, pools, and cascades through a lush forest of large Douglas fir. The first of the Lower Parker Falls is accessible off the trail and you can even get within a few feet of the falls. The upper waterfall, however, can be difficult to see because it hides behind the cliff face along the trail.

11

Painted Hills and Blue Basin

Smith Rock If you want a taste of Eastern Oregon’s dry, hot, high desert scene, look no further than Smith Rock State Park. Located near Terrebonne, this rock climbing destination draws climbers from all over the world. It offers mild bouldering and technical top-rope climbing. It also offers beautiful views of the Crooked River meandering through the canyon. Taking the Misery Ridge Trail is your best bet if you want a challenge, offering four miles of torture and plenty of rewarding views. If you want to avoid crowds stay at Skull Hollow campground, only 7.7 miles away.

One of the seven wonders of Oregon, the Painted Hills in Mitchell, Oregon consist of 4.9 square miles of towering cliffs, canyons, and radiant hills lined with red, orange, black, and gold. The clay-rich hills gained their colors from over 29,000-year-old volcanic eruptions and changing climate patterns.

Most trails are short and easy (.25 to 1.6 miles), but there is an extreme 161-mile bike route for those who want a more challenging route called the Painted Hills Scenic Bikeway.

The Painted Hills are only one of three units in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. Want some solitude? Try Blue Basin, a 3.7 mile trail that is child and petfriendly. These blue and grey badlands offer a grand view of the ravine that splits it as well as the John Day River Valley. The trail snakes through the otherworldly blue, green terrain taking you ancient past fossil discovery sites.

REPORTED BY Benjiman Walsh, Benedicto Penaloza, Cody Fuller, Oscar Sigala, Ian Kerr PHOTOS BY Benjiman Walsh, Ian Kerr, Emma Babcock

Seafood based soups ‘Handcrafted on the Oregon Coast’ Hand filleted, once cooked Albacore tuna (simply the best).

Find us at selected Natural/Organic stores and on Amazon!

New message

15 new likes

Backcountry reporter Oscar Sigala braves a week without technology, and shares his refeshing outcome from a week disconnected.

By Oscar Sigala

I

can’t quite remember the last time I spent a day without a phone. We live in an era where people depend on phones and technology for many things: basic communication, entertainment, and lifestyle. Approximately 95 percent of Americans are cell phone users, many of whom are addicted.

So for a week, I decided to unglue myself from screens and shut down. This led me to step outside, socialize—especially in one-on-one interactions— and connect with something bigger.

Technology is a consuming factor in my life.

With the internet I can find an answer for any question in just seconds; and not just one answer, but many points of views, voices, and perspectives.

Phones and social media allow me to socialize with friends, family members, and people with the same interests around the world. It also keeps me up to date with all the information about my favorite soccer team, politics, and the latest gossip. The fact that a device can do that many things is amazing.

And so giving up these luxuries, not having the ability to swipe up and communicate, was the hardest part of this challenge.

My phone is the first thing I interact with every morning after waking up. Typically, I check my Twitter feed before getting ready and watch videos on YouTube after getting home from school, instead of interacting with my family. I put off most of my homework or will scroll simultaneously while finishing chemistry lab write-ups. Later, I sit in front of a screen for about an hour watching a particular show on Netflix, or playing a video game, and it does not stop there. My eyes are fixed on the screen until I finally fall asleep, and then I repeat the process all over again the next day.

In this fast moving society, I finally decided to

turn off all my electronic devices and put them in a cabinet to collect dust. The transition was strange, waking up to an alarm clock instead of my phone, wondering what was going on with my social life, speculating if I received a mention, invitation, a like, or retweet. These thoughts were all consuming, and I realized how much time technology takes out of our days.

According to a Flurry study, U.S. consumers actually spend over five hours a day on mobile devices. About 86 percent of that time was taken up by smartphones, meaning that we spend approximately 4 hours and 15 minutes on mobile phones every day.

When I walked out the door with this newfound knowledge, everything became an opportunity, obstacle, and a challenge, a way to interact with our world. I am part of a generation of kids who remember their childhood without technology, embarking on adventures outside. Ten years ago, when I lived in Mexico, being outside was the number one source of fun and entertainment.

Every Saturday my family would get together at my grandma’s house, eat pozole and tostadas, and share stories about each other’s week. After eating, we went outside. All 19 of my cousins played tag in the streets, hide n’ seek, jump rope, kickball, and of course soccer. Without screens and hand-held devices, we found ways to avoid boredom.

Nowadays, young kids are given an electronic device to eliminate boredom. Kids are trapped, not being able to see the world beyond the screens. In Nicholas Parco’s article “Cell Phone Usage Linked to Boredom, Study Says” for the New York Daily News, scientists have discovered a connection between boredom and phone usage. Parco writes,

15

“Instead of texting or checking my email, I began to actually look at my surroundings.” “researchers from Telefonica, in Spain, and Germany’s University of Stuttgart made 54 volunteers log how frequently they used their phone in combination with individual boredom levels over a span of two weeks. The evidence proved that there is a direct connection between boredom and phone usage — the more bored you are, the more time you spend engaging apps, texting, and calling people on your phone.”

Instead of texting or checking my email, I began to actually look at my surroundings, soaking in all the sensory information around me, the change of leaves in trees, the increased pollen, people walking around, actually living.

On April 28, I set out for my first expedition up Spencer Butte. At first, lonely thoughts crossed my mind. I took the short (0.7 mile) trail and enjoyed a fresh perspective. Sweating like a mad mountain man, I reached the top and enjoyed a beautiful panoramic view of the valley. I felt at peace, realizing that there is more to discover beyond the horizon. I also realized there was more to discover about the people close to me.

The best part of the experiment was the family time, something that I worried was lost, replaced with too much time in front of a television.

Sitting down everyday and hearing my sister explaining how she got an A on her project, sharing stories about my mother’s past and things she aspired to do, laughing about the time I broke three windows playing soccer in the house, all the little details made me remember that there is still a child somewhere in me with a wild spirit.

Sunday was the final day of my adventure. I wanted to go out and see the world. I have learned survival skills throughout many backpacking trips—how to make a fire, pack a backpack, treat water, and read maps. The outdoors represent a way for everyone to get out of their everyday cycle, lose the technology, and find peace.

There is magic outside the door. Forget the daily routine, it is all about finding space for reflection and hitting the reset button.

16

Along the Willamette River, Oscar Sigala grins after his electronic cleanse.

Emma Babcock

A True Adventurer Kyle Dickman: journalist, family man, and pioneer.

By Catherine Oswalt

A

t 26 years of age, in the pursuit of a story to jumpstart his career as an immersion journalist, Kyle Dickman traveled to Papua New Guinea to kayak and document the Pandi River from its source in the highlands to its mouth on the north coast. “Our goal was to use exploratory kayaking and media to raise awareness of the effects of an expanding oil-palm and logging industry,” Dickman wrote in his story “Descent into Madness” in Wend magazine. “This place is where six kayakers don’t want to be, because caves—along with trees, undercut rocks and hydraulics like they’ve seen thus far on this river—are places where kayakers die.” Little did they know that this journey, something Dickman and filmmaker Trip Jennings took seven months to prepare, would take a turn for the worse and have six kayakers fighting for their survival on white water rapids far across the world.

Dickman, a true adventurer, and now a contributing editor for Outside magazine, has had both audacious and mundane experiences, shaping him as a person and influencing where he is today.

It is hard to imagine a single human being able to succeed in everything—to have it all. But Dickman has thrived, a family man with an incredible career as a journalist. He also served his community as an advocate and protector of the environment, fighting wildfires, and braving the elements to ensure not only public safety but to preserve the forests which the flames encompass.

Journalism is a career for those who follow their passions on a whim and create stories that resonate with readers, capturing something real and meaningful. “I like the freedom, I like that you can basically chase down anything that you find interesting,” says Dickman. Every journalist’s story begins differently and no clear cut path leads to

19

“I like the freedom. I like that you can basically chase down anything that you can find interesting.” - Kyle Dickman success. “I started journalism at the [University of Oregon] in college. My sophomore year of college I took a year off and I went to New Zealand, bought a van, and just drove around New Zealand in this van for three months and didn’t do anything. It was wonderful. But I read a lot and it occurred to me that I wanted to write, and when I got back to college I decided to study journalism.

“After college I started working, well I was a big kayaker in college, and so this guy I went kayaking with, we put together this grant to go do this wild trip up in New

Kyle Dickman, author of On The Burning Edge, reported heavily on the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona.

Contributed

Guinea and we got the grant from Natural Geographic and then spent four years traveling the world and kayaking rivers we had no business being on and then coming back and turning those experiences into TV shows or movies, or in my case stories for magazines.”

In Dickman’s article about the New Guinea expedition he recounts the fear and terror he and his colleagues endured. At one time in their trip, after battling unpredictable currents at the base of a waterfall, Dickman’s adrenaline falls and he is faced with exhaustion.

Before entering a cave, catching his breath, struggling to regain thought, he does not see fellow teammate Matt Fields-Johnson flip his kayak. “In the last moment before darkness shrouds the cave, the last thing Trip sees is Matt trying to roll, his head reaching from under his boat, gasping at the air. Panic washes over him after he misses his third roll attempt,” he writes. After fighting in panic to save their friend, the five other travelers eventually pull the kayaker to safety. After this transformative trip, Dickman knew what he was meant to do. “I realized that I wasn’t that good at writing,” says Dickman. “But it’s what I wanted to do with my life so I got an internship at

Outside.”

Now a contributing editor, Dickman says, “I think I wouldn’t be doing what I am today if I hadn’t been an editor at Outside. Learning how to… pitch to editors in a way that sort of speaks their language… basically learning how to sell stories.

“That’s what my experience at Outside taught me how to do. I think that if I wasn’t a serious writer still, I’m not sure that I would have the same response. But what it did was taught me how to be good at it, writing.”

Journalists write about their own experiences in an effort to be relatable and raw. “I just finished a story that will be out in the June issue of Outside,” says Dickman. “I got bit by a rattlesnake in April and my wife and I had just had a kid. Our infant son was with us.”

Dickman was on a family vacation in Yosemite hiking at Crane Creek. He was by a waterfall near a stone bridge when he felt something similar to what can be described as when you would step on a stick and have it crack into your shin. “It initially didn’t hurt that bad,” says Dickman.

“But then it hurt a lot.”

Dickman spent four days in the ICU fighting the bite

with antibiotics, doctors attending to him and people working to keep him alive. “I didn’t know much about snake bites, but I had a pretty good sense that it definitely wasn’t a good thing,” says Dickman. “I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I am allergic to bees and I was also stung by a bee right before. I was medevaced out of there.

“I mean I was scared. I told my wife to get our son out of there. I didn’t want her or him to see me like that, and I held my parents hand and vomited and shit violently for a long time.”

Dickman finished the story for Outside. It’s just another experience to add to the list. He has always sought to do more than just lay out facts, he wants to tell a story, to bring unknown worlds to life. In his book On the Burning Edge, Dickman admits, “that was a book-long project because firefighting is a world,” says Dickman. “Which most books tend to be about worlds, not just the single circumstance.”

Dickman, a man who’s reporting was nominated for a National Magazine Award, is more than a journalist, adventurer, a father. He embodies the American spirit: rugged, hard working, an intelligent pioneer.

CARRYING HOME

By Emma Babcock

O

Clay River, an advocate for Native American mawuhkacik (tribes) and an avid storyteller, explores what home really means.

n March 16 at the North American Youth and Family Center in Portland, Clay River’s hair was pulled back into a bun, revealing the short undercut below dark coarse hairs with sparse grey strands. White teeth beamed from a smile. Wearing a grey suit coat, black and white-spotted shirt, and blue jeans, River stood confidently. Wolves tattooed with gentle water-colors of blue and purple peeked out of a collar and symbols rested upon each knuckle. River wore simple makeup with black eyeliner, and walked briskly through halls layered with all types of art, from photography to murals to contemporary.

Clay Muwin River identifies as a non-binary, queer Native American. River [they, them, their] is a Passamaquoddy and Mi’kmaq storyteller, poet, artist, and educator. River uses storytelling to help preserve the oral traditions of Native Americans. In all of these ways, River is a performer, using drumming and traditional dance as a platform for teaching. River also creates murals to preserve and collect history. River utilizes all methods of teaching stories and lessons to educate people of all ages, particularly youth.

River holds bachelor and master’s degrees in

22

indigenous education, and aspires to further River’s education to eventually earn a PhD in education policy.

As a queer and indigenous person, River uses River’s story to inspire students and people. Having the opportunity to travel around North America, River has “been able to leave an image of [River’s] people in all these different places” in retaliation to the constant erasure in the layers of history.

Almost five years ago, River moved to Oregon from Maine, where River’s family still lives. River has six siblings, three of whom were taken from their home and put into foster care through Child Protective Services (CPS). Not only did River face this, but River also experienced discrimination first-hand in fourth grade.

After allegedly stealing items from a general store, River was put under arrest simply because of race. “Even by association, we would experience racism,” River recalled.

River took past and present discriminations as motivation to not only better River’s life, but also the lives of others.

When River left home, River wanted to have something permanent as a memory of home. “I have a band around my right arm of the white birch tree,” says River. “It was because I have been here for a couple of years and

Clay River observes spring blossoms in the natural surroundings of the NAYA center.

Emma Babcock

“We all have very different ways of moving through the world. We share our dances, our languages, our art, our histories. We are all responsible for each other’s histories.” - Clay River missing home and that tree to me is representational of my grandmother, who was by far my first and favorite teacher. She’s passed now and our homeland is covered in white birch... I’m carrying my home with me.”

Unfortunately, home is sometimes a complicated concept. River has nightmares of being trapped in a school and being hurt by people. Little did River know at the time that this was the basis of what River’s father had experienced as a child in Catholic boarding schools.

“I know what intergenerational trauma is because I’m having my family’s memories. It’s like I’m born with a memory or a physical feeling of ‘I’m not safe,’” says River. This phenomena, known by River and the

24

community skicinuwihq (native) as intergenerational trauma, is “a medical term for when you inherit what your parents lived.”

At the Native American Youth and Family Center, or NAYA, River holds the role of Culture, Wellness, and Education manager. In this position, River focuses primarily on social services, attending and teaching classes regarding Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), keeping up to date with Oregon health care, and helping underserved communities. The urban Indian program’s mission is “to enhance the diverse strengths of our youth and families in partnership with the community through cultural identity and education.” Located

Clay River stands in front of the supply shed used for Sweat Lodge Ceremonics, decorated with painted feathers.

in Portland, Oregon, the NAYA program has been in action since 1974, and now serves 421 self-identified mawuhkacik (tribes). Portland is historically known as a relocation site. River spoke to kehcikotonet (the elders) and speaks of their memories: “They were forced here.

Where their house used to be is now a highway.” Though so many unique mawuhkacik (tribes) are present in such a confined location, River acknowledged that, “we all have very different ways of moving through the world. We share our dances, our languages, our art, our histories. We are all responsible for each other’s histories.”

River posed a question: “if I put a bunch of teepees by the river, is that a homeless encampment or is that us

living in the ways that we’ve always lived?” River spoke of labels and how people would think if they were able to pursue their skicinuwi (indigenous first people) way of living. River would be happier fishing and hunting. “The earth was always meant to be our first teacher and if we don’t know how to live in that environment and survive in that environment, then we can’t survive any situation.”

River explained how close Native Americans are with their environment, saying that “relationships with the environment is how we form relationships to each other.”

As an environmentalist, River takes opportunities to teach students the ways of skicinuwi (indigenous first people) and nature through the NAYA program.

25

A honeybee pollinates a crimson clover.

Emma Babcock

INVESTING IN OUR LOCAL BEES Healthy bees mean healthy gardens.

D

By Essence Roy

reamWorks taught Generation Z kids that a bee should not be able to fly because “its little wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground.” The iconic Barry B. Benson, protagonist in Bee Movie, and the rest of the honey bees are a crucial part of getting healthy food on the dinner table and vital to maintaining the environment.

Located off the backroads of Eugene, a small house is covered with borage, phacelia, crimson clover, berries, flowering kale, and broccoli. A soft buzzing sound surrounds the property. Hidden in flowering bushes and plants are bee boxes. They are everywhere in the phacelia, broccoli, and lettuce plants. Here, Jennifer Hornaday spends time sustaining her gardens and hives.

Hornaday, an exuberant blonde, was working one day when her ex-husband came home with a large chunk of tree which was inhabited by a bee colony. “The first colony swarmed into the back yard tree,” Hornaday remembers.

Having no beekeeping experience, her first step of action was to visit GloryBee and the Lane County Bee Association (LCBA). “Typically bees swarm when their hive becomes too populated or their queen get old. About four days before the new queens hatch, half of the original colony stays with the old queen, while the rest swarm. Scout bees find and assess potential spots for the new hive. Upon returning to the swarm they perform individual ‘dances’ and the bee who has the most excited dance has their spot checked out by the others,” says Hornaday.

From then on she dedicated a hearty portion of her time to learning about more honey bees and understanding the work of hives. By the end of summer that year, she had five more hives in her care.

After further investigation and education, Hornaday found that the bees needed some serious help. Sure enough, in 2007—the same year Bee Movie came out —the United Nations announced a worldwide bee crisis. Her passion for gardening and the global importance of the bee population, prompted her to create Healthy Bees = Healthy Gardens. “I started Healthy Bees = Healthy Gardens and began work on creating pesticide free neighborhoods, to bring education to people about how to care for all the people, pets, plants and pollinators of the world,” Hornaday explains. Her organization educates the community about the dangers of pesticides and how to get involved.

Over the last few years Hornaday has worked closely with the Village School in Eugene to educate students on honey bees. “It is important for us to step up and take responsibility,” says Hornaday. “Everyone, regardless of age,

27

needs to know that [honey bees] are working every day for us.”

Together, Hornaday and these students have convinced friends, family, and neighbors to remain pesticide free and built multiple new hives around Eugene. Hornaday fundraises and pays to build the majority of the new hives herself. In 2013, she was granted the Rachel Carson Award for using these honey bees to create pesticide free neighborhoods. Consider her the Vanessa Bloome of the Eugene/Springfield area.

Among the vast gardens and many hives, and sequestered in the busyness of the Hornaday home, are mason bee tubes. Female mason bees only have a lifespan of six to eight weeks. These bees do much more pollinating than the honey bee because their only job is to create a safe place for their offspring. After hatching, the mason bee tries to find a mate as soon as possible; this ensures she can lay more eggs in her lifetime. She lays each special egg separately on top of a pollen patty inside the tube, creating mud dividers inside the tube before laying the next.

“A seven inch tube could have anywhere from eight to ten eggs inside of it,” Hornaday estimates, “The problem is that wasps find the eggs to be a tasty snack.” To protect the new generations of mason bees, Hornaday relocates completed tubes into a safe, controlled environment where they stay until early spring.

“If we want healthy food, we have to create the healthy gardens and I really encourage people to dovetail healthy vegetable and flower gardens they have with a pollinator garden that includes different staggering flowers and colors and have something for all pollinators 365 days a year,” says Hornaday.

Other than bee-ing a bee activist, Hornaday has been part of the city of Eugene’s River House Outdoor Program community since 1994. Hornaday can be found working with the rafting kayaking, snowshoeing, and hiking programs offered through River House. She also attends many herbal, bee, environmental, and gardening events throughout the year, including the Rhododendron Festival and BotanicFest’s Herb Day. Today, Hornaday has 13 hives on her property. And at one point, in 2016, she had more than 25. She explains that one of the most fulfilling parts of her work is, “seeing pollinators enjoy the organic flowering veggies and flowers I plant for them, as well as hearing people thank me for teaching their children to love and respect honey bees, and for all the hard work I do caring for our precious pollinators.”

Interested in educational opportunities for children or new beekeepers? Connect with Jen through the info below or check out her website!

(541) 914-2225 healthybeeshealthygardens@gmail.com healthybeeshealthygardens.com

28

Jen Hornaday weeds her garden for her many bee colonies.

30

University of Oregon Urban Farm director Harper Keeler empowers students through experiential learning.

By Emilee Daley

T

he University of Oregon’s (UO) Urban Farm sits right off Riverfront Parkway Road. Inside the garden lies the Lynn Matthews Memorial orchard, a circle of seats made of hay bails, and a building with a tin shed roof supported by two lattice walls and two column walls. There is a fig tree on the back side of the building and then a garden behind, full of tomatoes, garlic, asparagus, spinach, lettuce, potatoes, and more.

Harper Keeler, the director of the Urban Farm Program wears a flannel and khakis with closed-toed Birkenstocks. He examines the garden beds with a light shower coming from the sky. He explains how back in the late 1970’s there was more open space on campus and the area was not being used for anything, therefore a couple of students just started growing food, and over the next couple years it turned into the Urban Farm.

The program was initiated by Richard Britz, an architect teaching in the department of Landscape Architecture who envisioned an “edible city.” However, he left the program in 1979 and the student involvement in the Urban Farm deteriorated. In 1983, plant expert and passionate foodie Ann Bettman suggested re-inventing the program. It started with a

31

Harper Keeler and students work in gardens at the University of Oregon.

Emma Babcock

32

“When you’re growing a little garden bed in your backyard or in this class, it’s more than just how many heads of garlic that you’re going to get out of the bed. It has to do with sharing the skill sets with people.” - Harper Keeler modest gardening class that ran during the spring, and then it grew into a summer class, and over the next eight-plus years it continued to evolve. Bettman created a curriculum regarding what students needed to learn, such as soil science, plant identification and rotating crops.

In 2007, Bettman decided to retire after 25 years, and she asked Keeler if he wanted to take over the program.

Keeler had moved from New York where he was working in a nursery selling plants and decided he wanted to learn about landscape architecture. In 1980, he started a bachelor of landscape architecture at the UO and received it five years later. He began taking the Urban Farm class in 1981 and volunteered, having knowledge of how to do irrigation and mix compost. The Urban Farm has become his home, where his role as foreman of the garden includes running non-traditional classes and maintaining his own classroom. Keeler focuses on teaching food studies and systems, specifically the benefits—economic, political, spiritual, and environmental—of local gardening.

Unlike conventional classrooms where kids sit, learn, and leave, Keeler’s class mirrors a hands-on experiential model where students learn in the garden. His students have a transformative experience, getting dirty and pulling the carrot out of the ground, so to speak.

Taking responsibility for what you eat and being able to call it organic is empowering, especially while the world suffers from epidemic levels of obesity. Therefore, the idea that the food you eat can be healthy is beneficial. Harper says, “when I see students pull up carrots out of the ground, wash it and eat it for the first time, that’s a really emotional thing for some people.”

The class works together as a team, under

Keeler’s supervision and guidance. The big takeaway: at the Urban Farm, something is growing in an urban setting. For Keeler, it becomes a civic duty to maintain open spaces for growing food and making people food literate.

“When you’re growing a little garden bed in your backyard or in this class, it’s more than just how many heads of garlic that your going to get out of the bed,” says Keeler. “It has to do with sharing the skill sets with people.”

Food is the existential human activity. Eating is the social glue that holds people together because everybody has to do it. The garden brings all these natural systems together, including humans. In many cases, our food comes anywhere from 1500-2000 miles away on average, meaning there are shipping issues and the food has to be refrigerated and trucked, they have to grow varieties that can last in the truck. Keeler explains that this “means we’re not getting the cool, beautiful peaches that get really ripe cause they don’t last long enough so we get these things they call peaches that aren’t like a peach. So there’s that kind of joy of eating local food.”

In Lane County, $1.3 billion is spent on food, only five percent of which is local. Harper’s thought is if we decided to eat locally, we would leave $300 million in our local economy every year. That’s really important when they’re laying off teachers and cops, and cutting services for the homeless. Eating local becomes an economical and political movement. The class helps students collect a deeper understanding of the culture, environment, and history of where they live. It helps build community.

Keeler says, “At the end of the day it’s all about two kids making a salad from their own grown ingredients.”

33

The Willful Work Behind Our Willamette Watershed Audrey Squires and the Middle Fork Willamette Watershed Council actively engage the community in conservation.

By Ruby Lohne

T

he chirp of sparrows and echoes of a far off woodpecker sounded throughout the blooming field. Piles of freshly uprooted teasel dotted a field of camas, lying in the wake of the Thurston High School students fighting to remove the invasive species. Students looked to their guide, Audrey Squires, for direction. She walked around her in mudencrusted boots with a pair of sunglasses covering her eyes and a brightly colored purple top, ensuring her visibility among the sea of workers.

The Thurston Hills have been under the care of restoration crews for years, and on this day Ken Rodgers’ Thurston High science class was on board for a day of conservation work, helping the Middle Fork Willamette Watershed Council (MFWWC) and Willamalane Park and Recreation District to rid a camas field of overpowering, invasive species—teasel, wild rose, shining geranium, and blackberry. These plants, without the natural occurrence of fire, will overrun the camas.

Squires has been working with the Middle Fork Willamette Watershed Council as their restoration

34

project manager since September 2016, with the Staley Creek project being her first huge undertaking.

She grew up in Springfield, Oregon and attended Willamette University, earning her bachelor degree in both environmental science and Spanish. She then attended the University of Idaho for a master’s degree in water resources science and management. Squires spent some time in the Peace Corps after college which she believes is one of the best experiences of her life. It’s there that she learned “to approach life with a very idealistic and positive outlook,” she says.

Squires considers herself lucky that the project manager job at the MFWWC arose near her hometown.

“I ended up studying watershed councils and what makes them successful, so I kind of fell in love with the model because they’re community based and a bottom up approach to management, rather than the top down government approach,” she says.

While working on a restoration project at Staley Creek, Squires didn’t want to make the two-hour commute home every night to just turn around and drive back early the next morning. So each Monday

morning she left town with a full cooler, camping gear, mountain bike, running shoes, and a good book. In a blog post on the MFWWC website, she described this experience: “In my free time I choose to disappear into the woods and disconnect, so it was wonderful to get to do that for work... I look forward to the next project that takes me to the woods.” Since then, she has been very happy with the diversity of her tasks as well as the ability the job provides to get outdoors. Simply, she loves her work.

The Middle Fork Watershed Council began in 1998 when community members found it necessary to begin discussing natural areas that needed their local assistance. Over the last 20 years, the watershed council has grown from a small, unorganized group of local concerned citizens to an official nonprofit organization with a full-time staff, and continues to expand and grow programs to sustain the health and wellness of our specific geography.

According to the MFWWC website, the Willamette Fork Watershed covers 865,920 acres, 94.65 percent

of which is forest, 1.91 percent water. It contains endangered species such as Chinook salmon, northern spotted owl, and the Willamette daisy. This watershed stretches in a triangular shape from southern Springfield to Lost Creek down to Oakridge. Squires says watersheds are an area of land where precipitation collects into a common body of water such as a river, bay, lake, or stream. The lowest, flattest area closest to the body of water is called the floodplain. This area should be a U-shaped valley in a lower watershed that deposits sediment through slower water flow.

A healthy, diverse environment and habitat in a floodplain, particularly for this area, must include a river that has more than one channel, varied vegetation, diversified populations of fish and other animals, areas of forest, little to no sections of infrastructure, especially abandoned ones, as well as a coarse primary channel. Unfortunately, Staley Creek hasn’t been healthy in decades.

When the U.S. Forest Service decided to work at Staley Creek it was a combination of having done

Thurston High students go on a nature walk.

Benjiman Walsh

35

previous work in the area: some successful, some not, and the fact that it was an “unconfined valley,” following that U-shape that is integral to a healthy watershed. As outlined in a presentation created for the MFWWC, they devised a plan to reverse negative effects. This included removing old road and bridge fill material, removing berms and levees across the floodplain, to fill and raise the level of the river.

The MFWWC has multiple programs to get kids involved in learning about the watershed. This includes the Middle Fork Watershed Rangers which incorporates teachers and students (3rd-6th grade) to offer “curriculum and field trip learning experiences... with physical access to and meaningful engagement with the watershed through a comprehensive partnership with land managers, scientists, and professional educators,” according to the website.

36

They also sponsor a high school program, Middle Fork Watershed Stewards, which includes educational units on watershed ecology, water quality, invasive species, and restoration practices.

Both programs currently serve school districts in Oakridge, Lowell, and Pleasant Hill. These programs are funded through private donations and grants, so there is no cost for schools within the Middle Fork watershed to engage in the program.

On April 17, the MFWWC worked with Thurston High School students, highlighting the geology of the Thurston Hills. They also learned of their plans for the summer to clear out some of the conifer trees, as they had begun to crowd out the Oregon white oak that covers the rolling hills. Students learned how to determine the age of trees, how to remove blackberry bushes, and facts about some of the plants they were

Project Restoration Manager Audrey Squires leads students on a project at the Thurston Hills. them to guess the age of trees with a promised reward of candy bars. She then encouraged them all to come back to this spot, to bring their families and show them the work they had done. Squires firmly believes in engaging the community in projects.

“It’s important for people to understand why and how we have to manage the landscape,” says Squires.

“Because humans have already altered these habitats so much, we must take an active role in managing them so that they can be fully functioning. They won’t just heal on their own. I also believe that as people learn about and get involved in these projects, they will be more invested in caring for the environment and will better understand the world around them. removing, for instance shining geranium seeds can And finally, these projects cost money, so it’s shoot out over 20 feet. important for the community to see the importance of As Squires helped lead her group of students through the fields of the Thurston Hills, she prompted this work and vote to support funding for it.”

“Because humans have already altered these habitats so much, we must take an active role in managing them so that they can be fully functioning. They won’t just heal on their own.”

- Audrey Squires

37

Cottonwood Experience Co-teachers Emily Conner and Chris Wyland show students how to care for their environment. By Kiley McCurry

38

I

n recent years, place-based learning has rooted itself into many classrooms across the country.

Place-based education uses curriculum focused on community connections and environmental education, and provides grounding in life for students. Since 2007, The Cottonwood School of Civics and Science has looked beyond classroom walls and into the face of mother nature, actively immersing students into the natural world around them. Located in Portland, Oregon, Cottonwood focuses on three guiding principles: authentic place-based learning, family involvement, and community building.

Cottonwood started with three teachers and only 29 students. Since then, they have grown to 204 students and 12 teachers. Cottonwood is located next to the Willamette River’s Cottonwood Bay, a place that teachers, students, and community members go to study plants or woodland creatures, help clean up the landscape, or take a break from society.

“Symbolically, cottonwood tree seeds disperse across the neighborhood, just as our students can be found working in all corners of the community,” states Cottonwood’s website.

Cottonwood teaches a nature-themed curriculum while focusing on the importance of hands-on experience and travel. “Place-based education helps students learn a broad range of concepts by connecting them with the natural and social community in which students live and learn,” says 7th and 8th grade teacher Chris Wyland.

Wyland has been a math and science teacher at Cottonwood since 2014, but his teaching career began at a middle school in New York after obtaining a bachelor degree in biology education from Ithaca College. After four years of teaching, the material he was teaching did not seem important to the students and Wyland started working at a local outdoor store. “It wasn’t until I moved to Oregon and a friend of mine told me about this little school that did place-based education that I even considered going back to teaching,” he says. “I was instantly inspired by a model of education where the entire focus is on making connections to the real uses and applications of knowledge.”

Emily Conner joined Cottonwood in 2016 and coteaches with Wyland. Prior to teaching at Cottonwood, Conner taught English at the University of Alabama, but finds great value in geography education. “Placebased education gives students the chance to directly apply their learning and knowledge, and they can make

The bright and happy faces of Cottonwood students enjoying Rockaway Beach (right).

Contributed

39

an impact on their community and environment,” she says. “It fosters an investment in the place they live, with the hope that as they grow up they’ll feel confident to (continue to) make change in their communities and be stewards of the environments that are important to them.”

Unlike Wyland’s previous teaching experiences, Cottonwood students learn and practice the importance of education by connecting with the community. “What I love about teaching is seeing students get excited about learning something new and finding different ways to connect it to their lives,” says Wyland. “I also love seeing students step up and take on responsibilities that they or others didn’t think was possible for them to do.”

A regular day at Cottonwood always begins with a morning greeting. “A normal day in my class starts off with a class circle,” says Wyland. “In this circle

we all greet each other in different ways. Some days it is in a different language, other days we create new handshakes, sometimes it is silent. This is a time to acknowledge that we are all here together and working towards the same purpose.” The daily goal is to connect their education with the community.

Place-based education is important because it focuses on education that is valuable. “It works to turn out students who are citizens that care about the world and those around them,” says Wyland. “In a world that is more and more disconnected and fractured it is more important to seek out what connects us.”

Cottonwood students and teachers escape the classroom as much as possible, usually at least once a week. Every grade at Cottonwood has a role to play on field trips. “We have a partnership with Oaks Bottom Wildlife refuge and Portland Parks and Recreation where we are stewards of the area helping

“In a world that is more and more disconnected and fractured, it is more important to seek out what connects us.”

- Chris Wyland

40

with habitat restoration and invasive species removal,” says Wyland. “In this partnership we also work with the kindergartners as they start doing their first bits of service in the community.” Cottonwood travels on major outdoor trips in two-year cycles. They have travelled to Camp Namanu, Smith Rock State Park, Rockaway Beach (Twin Rocks Camp), and Seattle. The students experience climbing, hiking, and team bonding experiences. They use what they have been taught in the classroom and apply it to what is around them. “We take a four-day urban experience to Seattle where students are in charge of their own budget, they navigate around the city using maps to find the destinations like dinner or museums,” says Wyland. “They experience public transit, ferries, city life, and even get to spend some time at Pikes Place.”

Cottonwood incorporates geography into more than just their Portland trips. Geography and mapping

provide a learning model for what the students explore.

Over the past four years, Wyland and Conner have been able to make an impact in the lives of their students through education, but they have also learned things themselves. Each unit Wyland and Conner create is each uniquely diverse, but they all share the same recurring theme—community. “Sometimes I learn more than the students,” says Wyland. “I have to research everything I am asking them to learn and know it better than they do. Every day I learn from the students because in a way they are driving what we are learning.”

Conner adds, “I’ve learned how to design and lead projects, build partnerships with community organizations, work as a team with my co-teacher Chris.

I’ve learned how important this work of place-based education is, and how it can have a positive impact on students and make a significant difference in our community.”

41

Writer’s Note: As a wee lad, I lacked a form of transportation that didn’t involve my parents, but I had a job.

Growing up around aquatics my whole life, I became a lifeguard at 15. Being employed, I needed a way to get around on my own, investing in a 2016 Fuji 2.3 sportif (in normal-people words, the cheapest expensive bike). Buying that bike sparked an addiction. I would leave early for work just to take the long way there. Biking puts me in a meditative state that I just can’t get enough of.

by Ian Kerr

Ian Kerr races up a hill on McDowell Creek Drive.

Benjiman Walsh

43

O

n August 14, 2017, at approximately mile 81 of Albany’s Covered-Bridge Century Ride, I find myself alone in a vast cornfield, being tortured by drizzling rain. The only thing keeping my legs spinning is the force of the last pedal pushing up on my legs. The mantra in my head goes like this, you’ll experience rolling hills, you’ll experience rolling hills. I repeat it over and over to myself, peddling nervously past a yellow road sign warning motorists of a steep grade ahead. I no longer see sky. I only see the pavement through my water-speckled and fogged glasses.

on an elliptigo, an elliptical turned mobile. It is neither light nor built for speed. I ask this man what he’s doing out here on such a contraption for a 100-plus-mile ride, and he says, “I’m just living life, man.”

I zoom past, but he gets me thinking, and I ask myself what I’m doing out here, on a 100-mile ride. I push myself harder and the thought gets left behind.

At this point in the race, I think about what my boss, Ken, once told me after I had broken my alltime speed record biking 5.2 miles in 13 minutes and 42 seconds from my house to Amazon Pool. A third of that distance included biking through the Though rain is in the forecast this morning, the University of Oregon campus. “That’s pretty damn weather looks promising, clear skies with light clouds impressive, man,” I recall Ken saying. As a long-time in the distance. As I pull up to the starting line and cyclist and with many road and mountain races get registration sorted out, dark clouds roll over the under his belt, he then revealed the most important horizon. Undeterred, I suit up in my bike shorts, part of cycling: know your bike. jersey, and clip in my shoes.

At mile 41, the terrain takes a turn, vertically.

After 2,200 miles of training, I have a significant The “rolling hills” turn into the “Sierra de la Nada,” amount of bike knowledge and come to realize that a fitting name for the infinite, intense “hills” that my previous bike was cheap for a reason—it has a low I summit and fall down for a seemingly unending gear ratio and it’s extremely heavy. On July 4, 2017, distance. At mile 47, I roll to the summit of the first I became the proud owner of the Race Machine, major climb, the misting rain has been replaced with a 2017 Access Yadkin full-carbon fiber master of an Amazonian-like monsoon. At the top of energyspeed. My new love weighs only 15.19 pounds with a eating pass, only 40 feet of road is visible before it’s Shimano 105 drivetrain, tricked out with full carbon blocked by a curve. Ecstatic for a long coast down, I clips and aero-bars. disregard the torrential rain and sharp curves, going At mile 7 of the Century, I exit the city of Albany for it. My bike begins to vibrate, my speedometer and bike along a rural road. The sky starts sweating, reading 56.1 mph. At first, I feel excitement, making it the worst possible weather to bike in. The remembering how I broke my previous speed record. mist makes it difficult to see out of my glasses and My next feeling… nothing short of terror as I realize being the first day it’s rained all summer the roads the seriousness of the rain and the windiness of the are very slick. At mile 16, I pass a crashed rider—her descent. I begin to brake and instantly go into a skid knees, hands, and elbows bloody—but she assures at an illegal freeway speed on a windy county road me she’s okay. Danger proves unavoidable. At mile on a 15-pound bike. If I crash, I die. Easy as that.

25, I still feel great while keeping my average speed Sincerely mortified, I let off on the brakes, get a wild at a formidable 21.3 mph. The great rolling hills are rush of adrenaline, and ride it out. my faithful friends, the persistent rain an enemy that won’t back off.

In August, I dedicated every free moment to At mile 30, I come upon an interesting character cycling. On most days, I can get a 30 mile ride in, and

44

45

46

during one single week I rode 368 miles. Cycling has become an escape from all my responsibilities and obligations. There is not a sound better than that of my race tires propelling my body at 30 mph on smooth asphalt. I passed a bulletin board on the bike path one day and saw a flashy blue poster that talked about a 100-mile bike ride. It looked great! 100 miles!

Of biking! As icing on the cake, it started and ended in the park behind Amazon Pool where I work. I looked into it and sadly discovered I’d be in California on that particular weekend. But the whole 100-mile ride sounded incredible, so I did some Googling and found a similar ride in Albany, one that goes through seven covered bridges and sounded like a great alternative.

At mile 55, I approach a rider on the nicest bike I’ve ever seen. On closer inspection, it’s a Pinarello Dogma F10 Dura-Ace Di2 (in other words, it’s so nice it has an automatic transmission). I complement the rider on his bike, we get to talking, and I learn that he competed in the 2003 Tour de France and finished the 2,129-mile race. With an ungodly amount of respect for this man, I ask him what he’d do differently as a young rider, and he said, “I’d use my damn gears.”

At mile 75, I start to die. In running terms, I’ve hit the wall. The only way my legs are moving is the force of the last pedal pushing my legs around.

Listening to the god of cycling, I start shifting gears a lot. Near the top of a peak, my chain falls off and gets wedged between my back gear and my frame.

My bike, in this state, is totaled. But I thank Ken for his bit of advice and, lucky for me, I know my bike

inside and out. After five minutes of fiddling with my chain, I get it operational, but I notice that my tensioner is looser than an armless man’s sleeves.

That’s fine, but it means I can’t shift out of the front gear. So much for Cycle-god’s advice.

At mile 81, I pass a road sign warning motorists of a steep grade ahead. I have absolutely no idea what that could mean since I already passed the steepest hills I could imagine. As I round the bend, I see the unimaginable. It’s an Inception-like scene, in which the world folds in on itself and the land takes up three quarters of the horizon. Scaling this mountain would be an extreme challenge at mile 1. At this point of my expedition, I have the mental capacity of a sea urchin and and the largest climb of my life ahead. I have “you’ll experience rolling hills, you’ll experience rolling hills” on repeat in my head. I think of Cycle-god, elliptigo-dude, Ken, and the lads at the bike shop as I experience the king of all rolling hills. With no memory of doing so, I conquer Mt. Inception.

The last 25 miles of my conquest are a blur, my body is too numb to retain information. I now have the mental capacity of a sandstone cube. On the final 2-mile stretch, I accelerate to unnatural speeds and cross the finish. Exactly 103.21 miles later, my parents are there to congratulate me. They ask me how it was and all I can muster is, “it was a long way.” The ride in its entirety took me five hours, 33 minutes, and 28 seconds. I partake in a celebratory root beer float, and to my surprise, I see elliptigo dude cross the finish line.

He moseys up to me and asks, “Hey hey, what’s going on?”

I say, “I’m just living life, man. See you next year?”

47

WHEN I RUN...

Junior reporter Emelia Sherman explains how humans are specialized running machines.

By Emelia Sherman

Emelia Sherman poses at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field.

Emma Babcock

48

49

T

he sky is slate grey overhead, making the landscape seem two dimensional, and draining it of color. The vivid hues of my competitor’s singlet seems overly saturated against the dull backdrop, and the bright shapes bobbing through the corners of my vision are disorienting in my oxygen deprived state. Mud sprays my face as I surge through three inches of standing water, and I’m covered up to my thighs in thick dark muck. My breath comes heavy and labored, and a fire rages from my legs to my chest, white hot in my lungs. My hands are almost numb, only a slight pins-and-needles sensation in my fingertips remains. My hamstrings strain with every step, working hard to pull my feet out of the quicksand that gets deeper the closer I get to the finish line. As my pack nears the end of the race, another girl and I break away, and I recognize her as last year’s Oregon Midwestern District 800-meter champion, now my main competition at this year’s cross country district championship.

Her presence next me is threatening, my running talent lies in my strength over long periods of time, not my sprinting speed, and this race was going to be won by whoever could sprint faster.

Her hot breath on my shoulder and the screams of the crowd growing ever closer set off an alarm in my head, telling me I need to start kicking now if I’m even going to have a chance at winning.

But, for a split second, the pain holds me back, convinces me otherwise. The fatigue in my legs, the stinging in my throat and the three miles behind me hold me back. The question holds me back. The question that is familiar to every runner.

The question that ruins races, destroys seasons, and eats you from the inside. It lives on the backstretch of the track and the quiet portion of the cross country course, and jumps on you when

50

your legs feel heavy and your breath comes fast.

Why am I doing this?

Sometimes this answer comes quickly on an easy run, on a good day when the sun shines and a slight breeze cools your neck. On those days, it might even be easier to ask, Why wouldn’t I be doing this? Other times, like now, it is harder.

Like when you’re two sets into a five-set interval workout on a 90-degree day, and the back of your shirt is drenched in sweat, or when you’re standing in your doorway at 7 a.m. preparing to start your 10-mile run in the pouring rain, this question seems almost unanswerable. As Desiree Linden, the first American woman to win the Boston Marathon since 1985, put it: “some days it just flows and I feel like I’m born to do this, other days it feels like I’m trudging through hell.” However, the answer, the one undeniable answer, is real, and it is powerful enough to keep us going when we tell ourselves we can’t. My answer to the question, simple: because I was born to do this. In fact, as a species we were born to run.

What if I told you that you could outrun a horse? This may sound nonsensical, especially if you’ve ever watched a PE class run the mile, but it’s true. In fact, you and every other ablebodied person on earth, can outrun any animal on this planet given a hot enough day and a long enough race. You personally may not be in the shape to outrun a horse right this moment, but your biology, the very structure of your body, has evolved to allow you do to so. Each and every human on this planet is a specialized running machine, and the origin of this machine dates back to beginning of human life itself, to the birth of homo erectus.

Two million years ago, the hominini that would evolve to become modern humans underwent

Emelia Sherman walks on Pre’s Trail.

51

a drastic change, the Australopithecus evolved into homo erectus, and with that the brain dramatically increased in size. In order for a brain to grow so drastically, and maintain such a large size, it requires a large amount of condensed caloric energy, in other words, meat. Because no bladed weapons were used until just 200,000 years ago, that leaves a two million-year gap between when humans began eating animals and when they began killing them with edged weapons.

Humans, being wildly inferior to the rest of the animal kingdom in our physical abilities, had no effective way to kill animals at close range.

We have no claws, no fangs, no incredible speed, or mammoth strength, we just have one, gamechanging feature, endurance. Humans can endure long distances and extreme temperatures better than any other living thing on this planet. So we did the one thing that could utilize this strength, we ran other animals to death.

This technique is called persistence hunting, which takes place during the hottest part of the day and requires the hunter to chase its prey to collapse. Humans would pursue animals on foot for hours on end, and eventually the victim would just keel over out of fatigue and heat exhaustion.

Before the domestication of dogs, this approach was the most efficient form of hunting and was pivotal to the evolution of humans.

With this revelation, another essential question arises: What makes humans such great distance runners? The answer lies in our biology, and ultimately in our sweat. That’s right, humans have been able to thrive and conquer the rest of the animal kingdom because we are really, really good at sweating. Humans, being the naked, clammy creatures we are, can cool off faster than any other large mammal on the planet. On average, we dispel over a liter of sweat per every hour of exercise

52

through our four million sweat glands. We differ from other strong distance runners, like dogs and horses, in that they rely on panting to self cool, which poses a problem when full respiration is crucial. We have the advantage of being able to breathe and reduce internal heat, which gives us a major leg up on the competition.

What else gives us a leg up? Well, our legs. Our long stride, strong achilles tendons, slow-twitch muscle fibers, large joints, parallel toes, and big gluteus maximus muscles all contribute to humans dominating the world of distance.

Despite the immense strides humans have taken as a species due to distance running, an evolutionary advantage is not all we have gained from the sport. Running has impacted my life in almost every aspect, and has helped shape who I am as person, on and off the course.

When I run, I am free. The second I step up to the starting line and the gun goes off, everything else fades away. I cannot think, see, hear, smell, or feel anything but the race. Anxiety, fear, and doubt are left behind at the starting line.

They have no place on the course, the race is all consuming.

When I run, I am ferocious. I am a racehorse at the starting line, chomping at the bit. I am a shark at the gun, the footsteps of my competitors are the blood in the water. When I run, I am strong. I do not slow for pain, it pushes me forward, I live for it, thrive off of it. I race to see how much I can hurt, how hot I can burn, to push my body to do things my mind never deemed possible.

When I run, I am alive. I know that this is what I am meant to do, what I was born to do. Running courses through my veins, and not because I am the daughter of generations of runners. I live to run because I feel what the early humans felt, the thrill of the chase, the beauty of the pain.

53

o t e m o c l e W

The Caves Juniors Gabriel Cooper, Ian Kerr, and Essence Roy depart from a traditional classroom setting and embark on a daring expedition to the Oregon Caves. They develop an astounding plan to overcome hardships and experience the educational adventure of a lifetime.

by Gabriel Cooper

54

O

n March 9, my blaring alarm sounded at 5:58 a.m. It proved increasingly harder for me to drag myself out from underneath my covers given that it was a Friday. I expected to accomplish nothing more during the school hours than to complete some mundane, overwritten exposition on notions I was supposed to derive from the packets of text handed to me and 30 other teenagers. I remained half asleep while dressing myself and gathering my textbooks, as I no longer had to consciously think about what I was doing because I had repeated these exact actions seemingly thousands of times. Reluctantly, I began to walk out my front door to go to school, like every other day. Once I arrived at school, nothing about the facility or faculty had changed, other than the content of the homework and instruction drilled into my mind. That is, until the second class of the day.

This journalism class was no ordinary class, as it was comprised of skilled and talented writers, photographers, and designers. The most outstanding and unique part of the class, however, was the instructor, Ivan Miller. Within minutes, my disinterested attitude immediately reversed. He assigned me to conjure up the most interesting two ideas I had for articles, and turn them into a reality. As people around me began to search for easier routes to success, I instead took this project as a challenge to prove my worth not only to the journalism program at my school but to myself. This assignment had the potential to help me break away from the mold of traditional education, and give me an academic excuse to learn independently in the real world. After pondering possible ideas, I decided that if I wanted to go bigger than anything I could have ever imagined doing, I would need help. This led me to fellow juniors Ian Kerr and Essence Roy. The benefits of collaboration began to surface almost immediately, as Kerr pitched the idea of taking a civilian flight to a remote location hundreds of miles away. For years, I had wanted to be a pilot, and through my determination to attain my pilot’s license, I had managed to meet many small aircraft aviators. The plan appeared viable. After scrolling through hundreds of locations on online travel guides, one caught our eyes, the Oregon Caves in Josephine County. Our goal: fly to Oregon Caves National Monument in a four-seater airplane, rent a car at the airport, and go on a strenuous, off-trail adventure inside of the caves, documenting every detail. There was only one major obstacle left ahead of us: monetary expense. We did not yet have the money to make the trip happen.

After laying out all of the expenses, we estimated the approximate price tag of the trip to be a total of $1,017. We knew that it was all up to us to make this dream come true, so we formulated a plan to raise the funds needed, and went full send.

55

The next five days consisted of seemingly constant phone calls and attempts to advocate for our group, program, and most importantly, our trip. Kerr presented our aspirations to Rotarians, I campaigned for financial aid at religious and social gatherings as well as online, all while Roy stayed at a personal relationship level, receiving support from friends and family members. At the end of the first week, we raised an astounding $702.

Flaws in our spontaneous plan came to light as we continued to plan our escapade. Spring snowfall flooded the deeper parts of the caves, the plane we originally planned to rent had paperwork issues, and the tours still available at the caves were full.

Despite these setbacks, our budget had increased to $852 and we had successfully contacted the chief ranger of the Oregon Caves to confirm three spots in an underground cave tour for when we finally managed to execute our plans. Scheduling remained difficult, as weather patterns in early April are often very rainy and windy. Our pilot, Steve Bolton, and I had carefully analyzed the weather patterns. Bolton was hesitant and unwilling to fly in the current weather, so we were

56

forced to delay the trip to an even later date, potentially even a month later than originally planned.

A text message from Bolton suddenly made the impossible a reality. “Are you considering this Friday, April 20, for the trip?” the text read. This was only three days away, so I promptly went to work in ensuring all of the details of the trip were in place. Wolf, the man who promised us a minivan for the trip, had yet to text me back regarding his availability, so I became slightly nervous on the stability of our plans. Although slightly frightened, anticipation and excitement took over.

At 3:50 a.m. on April 20, I woke up before my 4 a.m. alarm, eager to start the trip. Having had no consistent contact with Wolf, I shot him a final text message: “we will be landing any time between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. this morning.” A reply never came, but we were committed, and we set out for the Eugene airport anyway.

Still completely dark, I pulled into the rendezvous point at the airport. Within roughly 15 minutes, the

entire crew arrived. I stepped out of my car and walked towards the blue pickup parked in the corner of the dark parking lot. I met Bolton face-to-face for the first time, and in that moment I realized our dream was becoming a reality. The man who agreed to fly three ambitious high schoolers without ever meeting any of us in person was now standing in front of me at the airport ready to fly us to southern Oregon. Without hesitation, we threw our bags into Bolton’s pickup, and drove to his hangar.

As we pulled up to the hangar in which Bolton houses his Cessna 172, my adrenaline pumped wildly. Bolton, a certified flight instructor, knew about my personal aviation goals and instructed me to take controls for the majority of the taxi, takeoff, and flight in the captain’s seat.

The petrified look on the faces of my friends in the back of the plane when they first heard that I would be performing the takeoff was laughable. This was exactly the type of situation I was seeking, a chance to prove to myself. I concentrated absolutely all of my attention on the voice of the air traffic controller and my instructor.

As I turned onto the end of the runway, it was finally time to take off. I pushed the throttle forward and pulled back on the yoke, and in just moments, we were airborne.

An hour and a half later, we slowly stepped out of the plane, the first leg of our journey over.

With still no word from Wolf, I grew worried. The airfield looked ancient and empty in comparison to the one we had taken off from. In a final attempt for contact, I called Wolf. After a few rings, to my amazement, Wolf answered the phone. “Hello, I’m Gabe, the student journalist in need of the loaner car for today. We just landed in Cave Junction,” I said.

“I see that,” Wolf answered before promptly hanging up.

As I looked at Kerr and Roy with a confounded look on my face, I heard a van driving down the hill towards us. When I realized what was happening, I could only utter three words, “What the hell?” Wolf was driving straight for us, as he was waiting for our arrival on the hill just a couple hundred feet from the runway. When he got closer, he slowly pulled up alongside us on the gravel road, rolled down his window, and without greeting said, “do you have bags?”

“Um… yes they’re in the plane,” I answered.

“Alright well, I have things to do,” he blurted out before stepping outside of the van and briskly jogging away down the side of the air strip. We were dumbfounded. A man who we had never met exchanged less than ten sentences and simply left us his company minivan, keys still in ignition, without any directions or specific requests when to be back. Still dazed, we all said our farewells for the day to Bolton, hopped in the van bannered with the name of Wolf’s company, “Captain Drake’s Family Aerial Adventures,” and set off for the Oregon Caves.

With the oil change required, door open, and check engine lights all on, we accepted it as part of the adventure and kept going because at that point nothing could stop us. After 45 minutes of windy roads in the middle of the nowhere, we went around a heavily forested bend in the road where a six-story wooden lodge became visible. Twelve park rangers stood on the outlook three stories above, watching us as we pulled into the parking spots lining the edge of a cliff. We stepped out of the van and began to gear up.

Walking up the steps, we met a burly, gray-haired, long-bearded man, Ranger Rob. This was the person who was responsible for our safety and guidance on the cave tour. After a brief talk on cave etiquette and history, we headed into the caves on the Discovery Tour. We spent an hour and a half of our time squeezing through tight cave walls lit only by the artificial lights illuminating

57

the pathway. By the time we finally exited the caves, we already wanted more. We were going to go off-trail.

Roy, Kerr, and I, in less than ten minutes, found a ventilation shaft which extended deep into the mountain. Kerr and I made the decision, that for “journalistic purposes,” we had an obligation to enter the cave. Roy stayed behind to ensure that help was readily available to us, while Kerr and I descended into the depths of the cave. Above us were thousands of harvestmen spiders, indigenous only to the Oregon Caves. The creatures could easily encompass my entire face with their gigantic legs. After a few moments in the cavern, I finally mustered enough courage to face my light towards the ceiling, and what I saw scared the absolute hell out of me. Two giant black cave crickets, roughly eight inches in length, sedentary on the wall.

Kerr and I immediately agreed, it was time to go.

Around 7:00 p.m. we were back at the Cave Junction air strip, stomachs full of Chinese food.

We all felt physically and mentally drained from our expedition, but I wouldn’t want to feel any other way. Wolf, maintaining his track record with a lack of communication, had still neglected to text me regarding instructions for a car return. Unsure of what to do, we decided to leave the keys on the driver’s seat of the van.

We were eager to get inside of the plane and take off before the storm front came in.

While in the air, with every subtle hand movement on the yoke, I felt my entire body rotate on the axis of the plane. Massive, gloomy cirrocumulus clouds began to roll in from the west, carrying with them roaring winds which battered the flaps on the wings. Watching the last light of day fade away behind the dark, rain-filled clouds pervaded me with an indescribable feeling of relaxation.

Every stress and worry that had previously burdened me no longer mattered; it was just me, my instructor, my friends, and a plane.

I looked down as we passed the city lights of Grants Pass, then Roseburg, Cottage Grove, then Creswell, until finally we were above Eugene. Although in reality it had been over an hour flight, it felt timeless. I was immersed in the mechanics of aviation while at the same time entranced by the endless view of the ever dimming horizon. The relativity of time became so transparent to me, as minutes passed by like seconds once did.

By the time we entered the flight pattern for Eugene Airport and prepared for landing, daylight seemingly had all but ceased to exist. Light bars lining the runway filled my view as we descended to the ground. From 80 knots to 30 in just a matter of seconds, we slowed down as the landing gear and the runway convened. In one day of skipping school and going on an adventure, I became a better and more confident navigator, socialite, explorer, risk-taker, and mostly importantly, a stronger person, both physically and mentally.

58

Gabe Cooper flies over the mountains in a Cessna 172.

Ian Kerr

VIEW FROM THE TOP Copy editor Catherine Oswalt faces her final summit in a farewell to the MINE program.

T

By Catherine Oswalt

oday, we can officially say we climbed the mountain. The view from the top is breathtaking, but the climb down is going to prove just as much of an adventure.

There for awhile, I felt as if I had lived my life as a series of mountains unconquered. My greatest achievements were accomplished at base camp, in the preparation and mapping out the route. I felt as if I never completed a task, never really reaching my potential or meeting my goals. Instead, as I climbed, my legs gave out, my heart gave in, and my head succumbed to the worries and doubts that haunted my consciousness.

My senior year has been one of those mountains and through no fault of my own I have not been able to complete the journey, to reach the summit. I tore my ACL, MCL, and meniscus, enduring a second surgery during my high school career. I have had three surgeries overall; all of which have prevented me from continuing my athletic career and meeting my dreams as a competitor. And so when Miller Integrated Nature Experience (MINE) director Ivan Miller asked us if we would like to go climb Spencer Butte I was sure I would not be able to.

Waking up that snowy and rainy morning on March 23, I was not prepared for what was about to occur. I got dressed in the appropriate layers, three socks, two shirts, a sweatshirt, two rain jackets, and some sturdy snow boots. And as I was leaving, seemingly prepared for the trek ahead, I had to grab one more item of gear; my big, black, ugly, metal knee brace.

That day class was abuzz, 14 students ready to hike Spencer Butte. I joined the fray of babbling gossip, stress, and excitement oriented chatter. Later at the

60

Willamette Trailhead, we geared up and began our walk up an already steep incline. It was wet and cold, but I was feeling good. Then, not 30 minutes later, my knee began to falter and shooting pains fired inside my legs, sharper than the bitter cold we endured. My classmates noticed my altered steps and asked if I was alright. I said yes, and we charged on. I refused to be the weakest in the group, I refused to lose, I refused to let this be another mountain unconquered.

We trekked on for what seemed like hours, sweat dripping down my face as blood dripped down my leg from where my brace was cutting into old scars. As doubts crept in, I heard a voice of encouragement.

Oscar Sigala told me “to keep it up,” and so I started to believe.

Miller asked if I want to turn back, suggesting it was not too late. I said, no. He smiled and said, good. Every time I doubted myself I heard words of encouragement from my fellow hikers, my friends, and peers. I heard them telling me to “power through,” telling me that we’d make it up together, and that once we reach the summit it would be worth it.

And suddenly I looked up for the first time on the trail, and realized I was at the top of the summit. I gazed ahead towards the vast landscape of man and nature’s creations. I saw the white blanketed sky and heard the wind howl a mightier roar than ever before.

Students in the Miller Integrated Nature Experience escape to snow-capped Spencer Butte (right).

Benjiman Walsh / Hannah West

“I refused to let this be another mountain unconquered.�

- Catherine Oswalt

I heard the laughter over the wind, I heard my friends, my family rejoicing in the fact that we made it to the top. I stood there and could not believe that I, that we, had conquered this snow-covered mountain.

This program gave me strength. This program has made me want to fight, to do something meaningful, to rehabilitate; to not just survive the elements, but to thrive within them. Through writing I have learned so much. I have grown, sharing my thoughts and healing both physically and mentally. Without the MINE program I do not know what I would have done this year. This program, these people, and Mr. Miller are what have made me fight to keep going.

the occasion and the natural ones began to emerge.

We made our first magazine in three months. Sonder told the story of unique individuals within our community—entrepreneurs, teachers, students, immigrants, and cancer survivors. The words seemed to fly effortlessly onto the page, as the design team created a masterpiece. We battled rain, snow, heat and whatever nature, or any person, threw at us to just attempt to climb mountains, trek forests, venture through caves and fly planes; all just to chase the thrill, the story.

And now in our last hurrah it’s time for reflection.

Thank you Benjiman Walsh, Darrel Harrison, and Kadon Engle for inspiring us with your dedication and making our stories come to life with your design.

At the beginning of the year we had a lot to live Thank you Emma Babcock, Kiley McCurry, and Ruby up to. The seniors before us passed the torch with an Lohne for your strong leadership. And finally thank award-winning magazine. Knowing the expectations, you to Miller for taking us on this wild and crazy we came together and began to thrive. We created a adventure, one we would have never taken on our newspaper in three weeks with no experience, sharing own. stories of people at Springfield High School as well as We entered foreign worlds, fought for our voices to the outside community. Our elected leaders rose to be heard, and together we conquered the mountain.

We Would Like To Thank Our Partners

SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

This is a MINE publication, produced at Springfield High School in Springfield, Oregon.