By Intern Sage Mailhiot

The morning was decidedly autumnal. It was cold and damp–one of the first days of September on which you can see your breath as you exhale. Buses full of students emerge from the fog, and their voices fill the parking lot at Howard Miller Steelhead Park. We met each other in a nervous and excited combination of “Buenos días”s and “Hello!”s and the doling out of raincoats. Not 10 minutes earlier, we were shivering and stiff, but once the day had been set in motion, it was impossible to not feel warm.

We gathered in this riverside park up Highway 20 for the inaugural excursion of a new NOAA-funded salmon education program–Recorrido por el Río, or River Journey. In partnership with Vamos Outdoors, North Cascades Institute, and The Salish Sea School, the program aims to enhance understanding of the watershed that students live in, and as a result, foster a sense of belonging and stewardship with regards to their environment.

This excursion to the Skagit River is just the beginning of an exciting next few months. Students, for most of whom English is their second or third language, will journey up and down the Skagit River Watershed, learning about the salmon life cycle, and what salmon stewardship looks like. Trips to come will span all the way from Ross Lake to the Salish Sea.

We boarded three bright red rafts and set out onto the turquoise Skagit River. The humps of pink salmon crested the surface of the water–“¡como la ala de los tiburones!”–sometimes jumping in a dramatic splash. We arrived at the convergence zone of the Sauk and the Skagit Rivers, where the silty glacial water of the Sauk is diluted, where we pondered why the two rivers were such different colors. Some rafts were quieter, pensive. Others were raucous, splashing each other and laughing. Two kids at the bow of the raft were taking turns dunking their head in the water while the other secured his friend. “¿Está bien beberlo?” they asked, and we laughed and shook our heads as a seagull dropped a very timely turd into the water. We passed a bald eagle perched in a yellowing maple tree. I learned the word for eagle in Spanish – “águila”.

By the time that we got off the water, the fog of the morning was long forgotten and the future was bright.