Signs of Spring

The other day somebody asked the inevitable question, “Ready for summer yet?” Well, in one sense yes, I think we are all getting just a little bit of cabin fever waiting for the snow to stop. On the other hand, that's the water we need to keep our streams in good shape come the dog days of August so I can’t feel too bad about it. My usual answer to this question is more along the lines of, “I’ll be ready for summer about Labor Day,” and there is some truth to that too.

There are some standard rituals though that tell me summer is coming, however reluctantly. Tax day. Put away the skies and snow shoes day. Restructure the display gondolas for summer stuff - T-shirts and such day. Periodic check in new inventory days. Oops, need to get an order into this vendor or that days. Earth Day events, not always on Earth Day, days.

This year Ben and I took a boat and participated in the Yellowstone River Clean Up day organized by Trout Unlimited Chapters to cover the river from Gardiner to Billings. Over all there were more than 200 volunteers out who collectively picked up several tons of trash. That's the good news and the bad news. Our segment was the right bank of the river from McConnell Access to Brogan’s Landing, about 5 miles, and we collected what looked like a boat load. The good news is that it really wasn’t as much as it has been in years past. I think that segment of river got the most use it has ever seen in 2008 yet I remember in the 1960’s we always carried a trash bag in the boat and always filled it every day. That trash bag may have been the Livingston TU Chapter’s very first conservation project, we got a couple of hundred onion bags screen printed with the TU logo and handed them out to cleanup volunteers all up and down the river. Woodsy Owl is slowly getting the message across.

Earth Day itself market another mile stone for Bear Creek Council, our local chapter of Northern Plains Resource Council as we participated in the commissioning of a solar power panel at the Gardiner school. This project was the result of a grant from Northwest Energy to the school which was facilitated by BCC. In addition we are putting up cash to fund a teacher’s development of curriculum around the solar panel for each grade level. Today Gardiner’s carbon footprint is just a little shallower.

Spring is promised to return next week. Richard 4/29/09