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Summer began in
May with thunderstorms and tree plantings. The
Lee Vining Elementary 5th and 6th graders planted Jeffrey pine and
Lodgepole pine seedlings along a small stretch of
Rush Creek just above the old Highway 395 bridge.
With great energy we set to putting the seedlings
into the ground, making sure the tap root pointed
straight down, and that the seedling received a
good dose of water to get it started.
Rush Creek did not give up its water easily, however. In the process of filling containers with water for trees, a strong current mischievously pulled buckets from young hands. Occasionally, some of us would run wildly downstream trying to cut the current off at a slow bend or within shallow water. "BUCKET, I LOST MY BUCKET!!!" And the chase was on. |
Four years of Outdoor Experiences
| Through the summer, as more cumulus clouds
piled above the Sierra Crest, other young people
returned to Rush Creek. These young people were
not from Lee Vining, but from Los Angeles. They
came to help hydrate developing root systems that
could not yet reach their own groundwater. Two hundred kids and young adults from vastly different neighborhoods in Los Angeles participated in the Mono Lake Committee’s Outdoor Experience Program. Seven different Los Angeles area groups traveled north to the Mono Basin this past summer to camp, hike, canoe, explore, experience, help water trees and chase buckets. |
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Its fourth year now complete, the goal of the Outdoor Experiences Program (OE) remains the same: to educate young people in Los Angeles about the value of Mono Lake, water conservation, and the difference they can make in the health of their water resources. Kids and young adults experience Mono Lake up close and learn a little about its natural and human history while camping, hiking, and canoeing in the Mono Basin.
Five of the seven groups were from community organizations involved in past or present water conservation programs in Los Angeles: Mothers of East Los Angeles (MELASI), Iglesia Poder de Dios (IPDD) from Reseda, Executive Partners in Environmental Resource Training (ExPERT) from Carson, Korean Youth and Community Center (KYCC) in central Los Angeles, and a Los Angeles Conservation Corps (LACC) "Clean and Green" group from San Fernando/Pacoima.
The OE program also hosted a Youth Task Force (YTF) group from central Los Angeles and Adventure Camp USA (a Korean community organization).
You Are the Connection
This year we initiated a special campaign called "You Are the Connection" with a generous grant from the Los Angeles Urban Resources Partnership. Through this grant, matching funds contributed by Mono Lake Committee members, generous grants from Arco and Southern California Gas, several in-kind donations, and our partnerships with a host of community organizations, we were able to expand our educational efforts, visiting schools and community organizations throughout Los Angeles. We also were able to host a record seven groups at Mono Lake this past summer! The OE program grew considerably last summer as did its challenge and meaning in the context of the future of Mono Lake and all of California.
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An occasional copy of the Los Angeles Times would appear in the Cain Ranch house where our groups camped and enjoyed "down time" between the long morning and afternoons of sun and hiking. A few of the headlines provoked sober thoughts on the meaning of the OE program: Thursday, July 3, "L.A. Loses Battle With Owens Valley"; Tuesday, July 29, "Water Deal Splits San Joaquin Valley"; Monday, August 25, "Population Surge of 18 Million Seen for State by 2025." |
For the moment, Mono Lake has a level of protection which today, in retrospect, seemed an impossible dream twenty years ago. What of the next twenty or so years? Can our water resources accommodate 18 million new people in California? Will an outdoor education program that stresses watershed and water conservation make a difference?
If only one of the hundreds, and someday thousands, of individuals that come to Mono Lake through the OE program eventually becomes a hydrologist, or a lawyer, or the Mayor of Los Angeles, or the head of Department of Water and Power, or the Governor of California, or a State Water Resource Control Board Member, or even the future Executive Director of the Mono Lake Committee, then perhaps memories of camping, canoeing, catching brine shrimp, and losing hold of a bucket in Rush Creek will make all the difference.
But for the present, on a more modest level, perhaps
the difference is when someone goes home and makes the
extra effort to conserve water because they see that
through their faucet they are connected to magnificent
waters, mysterious landscapes, and living things. 
Watering trees along Rush Creek forever makes you a part of the Mono Basin landscape, even if you don’t like watering trees, even if only one of the hundred or so Jeffrey and Lodgepole pine seedlings survive. Once you see the source, touch it, hear it, smell it, feel it, and have the opportunity to nurture it, water from the faucet no longer has an abstract beginning or end. The connection is concrete—figuratively, as well as literally.
Next year we will probably not plant trees along Rush Creek or any other Mono Basin creeks—no more mad dashes after lake-bound pails. A few years of tree planting is enough for now; it’s time to let the water do the work and allow nature to do most of the healing on its own, in its own way. More young people from Los Angeles will return to roam the shores of Mono Lake, swim its waters, climb its peaks, witness its diversion dams, and exert a little energy on behalf of its restoration. Chasing after lost buckets will not happen, but maybe removing boardwalk away from a rising lake will.
Summer ended in October—October 7 to be exact—as the Lee Vining Elementary 5th and 6th graders made the last watering visit of the year on Rush Creek. Once again clouds gathered over the Sierra Crest, not the summer cumulus type, but the tattered and gray altocumulus that often portend wintry weather. Rush Creek is gentle in October, peak runoff having long since passed. We watered quickly, efficiently, and never lost a bucket.
It’s appropriate that the Lee Vining 5th and 6th graders could finish the summer by watering the trees they had put in the ground. It’s also appropriate that those trees on this stretch of Rush Creek, owned by the City of Los Angeles, were kept alive through the summer by kids from Los Angeles.
The future of Mono Lake and its creeks is in the hands of people at both ends of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. We all share the same water. Who would have imagined a future like this twenty years ago when the creeks were dry and Mono Lake was on the edge of ecological collapse? Where will we be twenty years from now?
Bartshe Miller is the Committee’s Education Director and El Niño skeptic.
Return to Winter 1998 Newsletter
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