I graduated from college two days before moving to New Hampshire. I packed up my college apartment, said goodbye to friends of four years, walked across the stage, spent one night in CT, and then drove straight to a meet-and-greet lunch with the coworkers I would spend the next five and a half months with. In May, I hardly had time to think about my upcoming summer. I hardly anticipated it would be life-changing.
At the NLRA, I started as the lead water quality steward. I helped train a kind an enthusiastic group of volunteer lake monitors, a partly humbling experience; for all the procedures I struggled with, they got it on the first try. With practice, though, I no longer spilled water all over the boat with the crazy straw-like contraption known as the octopus (integrated tube sampler). I was trusted to drive our old pontoon boat, even with its grouchy engine. At every mishap or tricky situation, I’ve been able to figure it out with the help and support of my fellow watershed steward (and friend) Hannah.
Every day at the NLRA, I feel like I'm making an impact, even when I mostly just stare at the computer. The excitement of getting a chunk of code to run correctly in R overcomes all the frustration it took to get there. I made dozens of graphs showing seasonal trends for phosphorus, chlorophyll, and Secchi disk transparency across seven lake monitoring sites, then overlaid the data that the volunteers I helped train collected. I feel proud to give their data meaning, instead of letting it sit in the Excel spreadsheet for years.
Over the summer, I’ve also discovered that I may be better at working with people than I thought. I rarely interacted with the public in previous positions, so I was excited to become the education lead steward a few months into the summer. One of the highlights was leading a hike with four girls from Camp Wicosuta. I’ve never worked with kids before, and I was paranoid they wouldn’t take me seriously. I discovered it wasn’t too difficult to keep them engaged with all sorts of nature facts. They were a chaotic bunch but were fascinated with all the nature we saw, especially the adorable orange newts. When we got to the top of the mountain, fog covered the trail. One of the girls asked why it looked like that. I told her it was like we were walking through a cloud. “Are we really walking through a cloud?” She looked up at me like I’d said she gets to eat chocolate cake for three meals a day. My heart melted. I hope that she remembers that moment for a long time.
Seeing the kids' excitement reminded me of the importance of fostering a love for nature at a young age. The key to saving the planet from the human race is to get people to care. I think it may be my responsibility going forward to open people’s eyes to nature. It only took a few events with the NLRA to inspire me.
Strangers and friends keep asking me, “What comes after October?” I always fight a sigh because that’s the terrifying unknown I'm incessantly worrying about. I don’t even know what my life looks like in a week. But I'm certain that this service term is helping prepare me for stress and struggles to come. I think my various experiences here will give me a launching pad for a most fulfilling life. Everything always works out in the end.
Shannon is a half-term member at Newfound Lake Region Association. In their free time you might find them tickling the ivories on an ancient Yamaha keyboard, either sight-reading Disney music or replaying songs they learned in high school. Learn more about Shannon here!