By the end of the project, the students in the forestry and heavy equipment program at the Career Development Center were throwing the word "thalweg" around like seasoned hydrologists. "Thalweg'' is German-based science speak for the deepest part of a stream channel. Several of the students experienced it firsthand.
They were collecting cross-sectional data along the Batten Kill. They located the cross section using a GPS instrument and recorded channel depths and widths with a Philadelphia rod, a 100-foot plastic tape and a surveyor's level. My organization will use this information over the winter, as we prepare permit applications to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation for next years trout habitat restoration work.
It has always taken "a village" to complete our annual restoration projects on the Kill. Lots of funders, lots of agencies, a variety of contractors, a number of willing landowners, and volunteers annually participate. This year, the population of our village grew to include the 10 students in teacher Dave Dence's forestry program.
For many of them, the surveying skills they've begun to acquire will prove useful in their future studies at Paul Smith's College or other schools, or in their work lives as foresters, loggers or other forest professionals.
For our part, the students filled a need that has gotten bigger every year, as our agency partners' workloads increase, and they can't find the time to survey our restoration sites. We'd have been stuck up a crick without the CDC kids.
Before field work began, we got a refresher lesson on differential leveling from volunteer Paul Miller, a local environmental consultant. He reminded us how to establish a benchmark elevation and how to stay tied to it through a series of foresights and backsights as we worked our way up the river.
We began our days at 8:15 a.m., meeting at Arlington Rec Park, where we surveyed the "Yellow Barn" parcel across the river, or near the Benedict Crossing bridge. I arrived with a car trunk full of waders, borrowed from the Manchester National Forest ranger station, from which most students were able to pull out appropriately sized footwear. (The size 14-er was an exception.)
Some kids routinely ran the instruments, others routinely held the line. Some agreed, with encouragement, to walk the line across the river, or to take measurements along it. A couple of kids filled out the field sheets, and quality-checked our measurements as we moved along. Others go-ferred, or walked up river to locate the next cross-section site. We used radios and walkie-talkies to communicate up, down and across the river Ñ over the sound of fast-running water, or wind or in the trees.
Not everyone was able, or wanted to, stay dry. Sometimes their wader-encased legs weren't quite long enough, and little bits of the Batten Kill spilled over their bibs. Sometimes their feet slipped out from underneath them in the fast current, or they had to rescue a piece of equipment that got away.
At times, none of us were able to stay warm. The Batten Kill this time of year is cold indeed, and the waders were not insulated. Most days, the sun (when there was sun) was just beginning to fill the valley as we packed up and the students headed back to school around 10 a.m. Warm gloves for everyone appeared early on in the project.
Last week, after one outing a week for five weeks, the team finished the job. They'd finished 13 cross-sections on nearly a mile of river. They'd gotten their river legs. And they'd earned our deep gratitude.
Their names will appear on the plans we submit to the Army Corps and the state. In addition to teacher Dave Dence and his assistant Dwayne Metcalf, those names are Bradley Michael Darling, Noah Anthony Greene, Gary Lee Hewson, John Thomas Kearns, John Williams Kent Jr., Eric Lozier, Jason Matthew Prouty Jr., Jeremy Thomas, Michael David Vlach and John Watson.
Shelly Stiles is the district manager of the Bennington County Conservation District, whose mission is promoting rural livelihoods and protecting natural resources in southwestern Vermont. Web site at www.bccdvt.org.
This column appeared in the Bennington Banner in December 2008, as one of the BCCD's Conservation Currents pieces, a bi-weekly feature written by BCCD board and staff members since August 2006.