–Sara Linden-Brooks
Ahoy, from the Mystic Whaler! It’s quite bitter-sweet for me to announce that we are in our final week of the 2010 Clearwater season. For the past ten weeks we have been growing as educators, shipmates, and most importantly friends. We traveled from Manhattan to Albany and a good many places in-between. Somewhere along the way we realize that even as an Educator you have a lot of learning to do and the Hudson has a lot to teach. Here are a few things we learned:
For starters if you’ve been onboard the Clearwater or the Mystic Whaler then you probably know we have a VERY special head system. Unclog-able, reliable and fabulous; once you get to know it! One might say we have some extra time on our hands that is usually spent unclogging marine heads to ponder the wonders of the Clearwater 5-gallon bucket head system. This season we discovered that a single bucket saves 33 flushes! ! ! Assuming you’re using a low-flow toilet that means we save about 48 gallons of water in a single 5-gallon bucket. Interesting huh?! It’s the small things that make a difference.
Being onboard you learn quickly to appreciate everyday and every sail. Of all of the sails we had this season not a single one was like another. Even multiple sails with the same school brought us wonderfully different experiences. This makes life aboard interesting. As an Educator you learn you can ask the same question everyday for a week and get different responses each time. For example when a group leader asked “What are some renewable energy sources?” A student immediately responded “uhrine.” Followed up by, “Do you mean Urine? No, that’s not really an energy source.” And the child’s exasperated response, “Well we gotta do something with it!!!!” And he’s right! This forth grader thinks outside the box, he’s just the sort of next generation environmental leader we’re looking for!
If you thought life aboard might get a little boring after a few weeks or that trawling for fish might get a bit monotonous the hundredth time… I won’t lie there are mornings each of us may have felt like that, but the river taught us not to. For example in the last week we have had the most biodiversity of fish we’ve seen all season in our trawls. Whether it was catching our first Oyster Toadfish in NYC or a Northern Pipefish in Yonkers one day and a giant Catfish in Piermont the next the Hudson has shown our students some of the most incredible fish from her depths. These fish have the ability to enchant our students and even us educators, allowing us to truly appreciate what an incredible estuary we have at our fingertips.
Lastly, I can’t speak for the others, but the most important thing I learned this spring was to love: to love educating, to love each other and to truly love the Hudson River. This season would not have been nearly as wonderful without our amazing volunteers, our deckhand comrades of the Mystic Whaler crew, and the people in the Clearwater office. There’s only one thing which brings us all together a love for the River and after all that she has given us, I can only hope we have given a bit back. Thanks for a wonderful season, and Fair Winds!
