Cheers for Extra Special Volunteers!
Read about extra special volunteers in this section of our website.
Summer 2011: Eagle Scout Dominick Luna and Scout Troop #679
A huge round of applause goes out to volunteer Eagle Scout Dominick Luna and the great crew of boy scouts and parents from Troop 679 who gave our Nature Hut building a huge facelift in June. Armed with nothing more than tools, talent, and time, these folks arrived at our site and did more work in two days than we ever could have done ourselves during this busy summer. We LOVE our new shelves, stairs, equipment ramp, and easy-to-open door! It is amazing to walk into our building and have space to move around and such nice shelves for storing our equipment and supplies. Thanks so much to all of the scouts and their parents, but especially to Dominick for initiating this lovely project. We look forward to working with Dominick and his crew on more projects in the future.
Spring 2011 Cheers: Winterns!
During the winter of 2010-early spring 2011, Nearby Nature had four Winterns! These wonderful students spent 120 hours each working in the Learnscape and on park restoration projects. Thanks so much to Andrew Roll and Chandler Wherry for their many hours of planting, pruning, composting, mulching, weeding, and creating in the Learnscape. The lovely stick-and-wattle fences they built as well as their work on the Natives Hedgerow and Loose Parts Playspace have significantly enhanced our space. We are also grateful to intern Oona Badgley, who did all sorts of creative work on our composting systems. Thanks to Oona, our giant worm bin is up and running and we have an artistically painted tumbling composter built out of recycled bike parts and a 120 gallon drum from BRING. Finally, restoration intern Zev Levine pulled yards of invasive ivy and blackberry out of Wildflower Hollow, helped lead volunteer group ivy pulls, and started a planting plan for the less diverse part of the Hollow. Wow! It’s amazing what just four dedicated interns can accomplish in a few short months. Thanks so much to all of you!
Winter 2010 Cheers: Sally Keller
Once in awhile, a volunteer comes along, and helps out in so many vital ways, over and over again, that you just can’t imagine the group without her. Nearby Nature’s Sally Keller is one of those wonderful folks.
A seasoned educator with years of experience, Sally enjoys kids of all ages, in all sorts of weather, inside and outside. Time after time, and often at the most critical times, Sally answers our call for help. One of our only volunteers who conducts classroom visits on her own, this winter Sally played an especially key role in our program. Almost evrery week she visited a school, teaching kids about everything from Willamette River history to aquatic animals. Thank you so much, Sally, for all your contributions to our work. We couldn’t do it without you!
Cheers for our Fall 2009 Nature Guides!
This fall, we were especially grateful to our wonderful volunteer nature guides and student interns. These folks showed up in Alton Baker Park, rain or shine (and there was LOTS of rain this fall), smiles and teaching hats on, every weekday morning from late September through mid-November. For two plus hours, they wandered the park’s woods and meadows with excited kids in tow, teaching about everything from river ecology to Kalapuya Indians. In the words of one of this fall’s visiting teachers: “Even with the torrential downpour, I kept hearing ‘That was the best field trip ever!’ all the way home.” Three cheers for the dedicated folks who spent nearly 500 hours making this program a great success this fall. An especially big thanks to interns Casey Pagels and Duncan Geisler, who spent 60+ hours each at the park this fall!
Cheers for our Spring 2009 Interns!
Wow! What an awesome group of interns we had this spring! Three big cheers for Tracy Wright, Sierra Predovich, Renee Gabriel, Yael Grundstein, Nicolette Getty-Beck, Meesh Michan, Sarah Jo Pond, and Clare Gordon. These eight enthusiastic, creative, and dedicated volunteers led nature walks (all eight) and directed pond study (Tracy, Renee, Meesh, Sierra, and Sarah). They painted murals for our Learnscape (Clare and Nicolette) and created a cool new watershed model (Sarah). They helped with the newsletter (Tracy) and worked with our composting program (Clare). We certainly would not have accomplished nearly as much this spring without them. Lucky for us, Tracy, Nicolette, and Yael will be sticking around for the summer as well. Thanks so much to all of you for your many contributions!
Cheers for our Winter 2008-2009 Learnscape Volunters!
What fun it has been to get started in earnest on our Learnscape this fall and winter! And how wonderful it has been to see a whole new crew of volunteers involved in our projects. For folks who love to get their hands dirty, their feet wet, and their brows sweaty, our site work has been so much fun. And even our artistic friends have had a chance to put their talents to work! A big thanks to Dan Peramabo for building a really cool 4’ x 8’ worm bin (vermitopia), Kelly Casad for creating two lovely murals, Teresa Finn who has come to many of our Saturday work parties and helped remov
