These past few weeks, the world has been waking up, spring peepers nearly deafening in the evenings, ducks and robins and bats ducking and swooping overhead. The leaves have not yet returned to the trees, but buds are starting to swell, and maple flowers are starting to emerge, a startling red against a still greying world. The rivers are swollen and flowing rapidly and envelop their banks. I think spring is one of my favorite times of the year, as the world changes over from one thing to the next, and snow is gradually replaced by tentative green grass (and then more snow, from the inevitable late-season snowstorm). This season is comforting, yet strange this year.
In light of the pandemic, we have had to change many things about our programs: the Blue Heron House is closed, we are shifting our volunteer training and information sessions to online formats, and we’ve had to figure out how to get clean bottles to sample with. We have frantically tried to figure out how to adjust our rivers monitoring program to fit a two-person schedule, instead of relying on our wonderful volunteers.
Since we are short on help, we deputize my cat as a new water quality monitor. He initially appears to take his duties quite seriously, and patiently watches as I untangle the probes and set out calibration standards, but then knocks them all over when I turn my back. He is not invited to come sample the rivers with us.
Despite our lack of cat, we somehow manage to complete our sampling without too much trouble. It is a comfortable and familiar routine as we arrive at each site: dip our dissolved oxygen and specific conductance probes into the water, take a couple samples for later analysis, record our data, and spend a few minutes enjoying the spring sunshine.
Sarah is a full-time member serving with the Green Mountain Conservation Group. You can read more about Sarah here!