Feeling the spirt of Whychus Creek

Last week, 60 IEE juniors from Sisters took to the banks of Whychus Creek for a day of restoring the riparian area in Creekside Park.

The City of Sisters saw the need to heal over part of the creek's banks adjacent to and within Creekside Park, and provided about 300 plants - alder, wood rose, dogwood and snowberry.

SHS teachers Glenn Herron, Samra Spear, and their IEE (Interdisiplinary Environmental Expedition) team saw this as an opportunity to put the junior students to work doing the planting.

With the help of Kolleen Yake, education director for the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council, and her sidekick Kelly Beck, they added an IEE enrichment project that brought Whychus Creek into the students' hearts - and helped them to forget their sore hands and back muscles.

At the end of the day, the students gathered in a circle to share their work. This essay by Sianna Flowers is but one example of what many of the youth feel after sitting quietly and allowing the creek to soak into their consciousness.

"It's a rather forgetful creek.

One second it's tripping over itself in its rush to move on, causing great frothy rapids as a result.

But in the blink of an eye it's clinging to the bank, stopping to tease children, meandering past bright flowers.

Sometimes it even fights to return, scrambling back over itself and making a general aquatic ruckus.

Even in the beginning it's twisting around and carving up the mountain rocks in a vain attempt to give a passing raven or bush the what for, having entirely forgotten it's original purpose.

It has so much to say, entreating people to late-night dips or ill-advised treks across the winter ice.

Leaves and other woody paraphernalia all but throw themselves at the burbling water in their desire to hear more or go on some grand adventure.

And in the end it gets to us all, this creek.

It's forgetful and wandering ways seep in through our pores until it comes as a surprise to no one that we Sisters kids have fire in our eyes and water in our souls."

After Flowers finished reading her essay, a quiet settled over the group, and then each student shared his or her contribution.

Over the years, outstanding examples of the students' feelings have come out in the form of "Field Guide for The Place We Cross The Water," produced by the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council (UDWC) and Arts Central. The other is a 20-page booklet, "The Place We Cross the Water: Whychus Creek," also produced by UDWC, and funded by Laird Norton Foundation, Bonneville Environmental Foundation, and Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board. Both publications contain art, essays, and poetry by Sisters IEE students.

A recent example is a CD also produced by UDWC with original music written and performed by SHS IEE students: "The Place We Cross the Waters: Songs of Whychus Creek-Sisters High School IEE Students."

These productions received financial contributions from The Roundhouse Foundation and the continuing support of the IEE teachers.

Over the years, Kolleen Yake has been a guiding light for the IEE field programs. During the recent work and field experience, she and Kelly Beck watched as students quietly found a personal niche along the creek to explore their thoughts and feelings.

"The goal is to give the students the opportunity to develop their solitary connection to the creek," Yake said.

As Beck collected the material that contained the art, poems, and essays that flowed out of the students' hearts and minds, she read each one as she tucked them into a folder. The last one, on top of the pile, was Hannah Tenneson's:

Whychus Creek

Your waters are

a promise, a whisper

that death doesn't mean

the end.

Your waters are and always will be

a call to arms

to protect the beauty around us.

As Kelly carefully tucked Hannah's small piece of paper into the folder, she said, almost to herself, "I wonder how many of these kids knew they had this inside them."