Noor
Registered: January 2009
Posts: 1
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Seeds of Change
Noor
Life: the property or quality by which living organisms are distinguished from dead organisms-- often by beauty, animation, zest, positive livelihood, and movement. These qualities once distinguished the Mighty Rio Grande as a river from the drab ditch we see today.
In July of 2008, my English 11 class took a field trip to the Bosque, the forested region along the Rio Grande in New Mexico, to help restore the trees destroyed by a recent fire. The government has given the laborers three years to catch up on the restoration project, but they were a little behind.
Before we went on the trip, we were educated about the region by our class’s guest speaker, Jeff Sipley. Sipley is a teacher involved with a New Mexican organization called Tree New Mexico designed to help the Rio Grande. His role is to educate young people about the importance of restoring the river’s life. He provided us with basic background knowledge to help us on our trip.
“Because the river isn’t deep and is unable to flood, it isn’t able to support much life. This is one of the main causes of the extinction of all of the animals,” he told us. “We have come up with a solution of allowing the river to flow into ‘buffer zones’ to the sides while it’s still being controlled.”
Tree New Mexico is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing tree-planting opportunities and environmental education to the general public. Tree New Mexico has been trying to persuade the government of New Mexico to allow flooding and to help others see the essentialness of this cause. If only the government could understand the necessity of the river’s flooding in order to maintain the balance of nature.
When we got there, our class was provided with fifty trees to plant as a small contribution to the Bosque. We were given a short training session on how to plant and scarify the roots in order to enable the environment to supplement the nourishment needed in the diet of the Bosque.
Planting the trees was a fun experience: not only were we able to help change the world by planting these little seeds of change, but my partner and I made it into a competition with the boy’s group to see who could plant more. We accomplished the planting of nine trees, yet the boys beat us by planting one more. There were no trees left to plant so we let them have the score.
We were seriously focused on following the precise steps in order to help make such a radical change in the environment, and it also felt good to help the world.
When we finished planting the trees, my class and I went on a hike to explore the natural beauty of the Rio Grande. We saw many creatures, such as the Cooper’s Hawk and the Silvery Minnow people often speak of.
Seeing the nest of the Cooper’s hawk and the clusters of fish helped me come to the realization that nature is truly fragile, especially in the Rio Grande region. Both species, the Cooper’s hawk and the Silvery Minnow, have gone extinct over the years, posing the necessity for the Rio Grande’s need to be saved.
“The male hawks gather brush and wood chunks to create more than one nest for when the time comes for the female to lay the eggs. Then the female is able to choose which nest is more comfortable for her,” we were informed by Martin Martinez, the Bosque’s ranger.
The dirt was getting in our shoes, staining our socks and making us incapable of walking adequately. Walking upon the uneven ground was hard work. The blasts of the heavy equipment devices, such as bulldozers, were disrupting the beautiful sounds of nature; the frustrating machines were constantly howling, spreading the wood chips and natural litter of the dirt-encrusted earth.
As we hiked through the Bosque, we were able to glimpse some regions of the river. The unnatural dictation of the river using irrigation ditches created a thirst in the arid region. The Rio Grande habitat has become desperate over the long laborious years it has had to endure the oppression from the people.
This tyranny is seen through the many jetty jacks bordering the river. These crossed steel structures have outlived their usefulness. Jetty jacks were first installed in the fifties to trap sediment, thus stabilizing the banks of the Rio Grande. But because the river doesn’t flood as much as we would like, they’re no longer needed. The Bosque is slowly coming back to life by the fixation of the region after many long years of destruction.
The river used to be full of water and carried many different types of fish that have been going extinct over the years such as the Silvery Minnow. The Mighty Rio Grande, the one people used to sing about, doesn’t seem so mighty anymore. Instead, it is vulnerable and incapable of carrying out its duty any longer. The Rio Grande used to sing on its own, bringing life to the creatures around it. But the river doesn’t flow as well as it used to; its voice can no longer be heard because we’ve muted it. We can change this issue by planting trees and fighting against this tyranny. If a group of 13 people can contribute, imagine what the world can do.
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