Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Never a Dull Moment

A participant doing something he has never done before,
hold a shrimp he caught himself!
It's only been a week, but I can already tell that there will never be a dull moment working with Save the Harbor. Whether it be efforts to rescue a bucket that was dropped in the channel outside the Childrens Museum or finding a jellyfish there another day. Whether it be showing off a horseshoe crab to kids who had never seen a live one (Side note: Did you know they have ten eyes scattered around their shell?) or having to make up games under the pavilion at Blacks Creek due to an impending thunderstorm. While I wake up each day having a rough estimate of how my day is going to look, by the time I get home each day, I can look back and realize that something out of the ordinary happened each day.
My favorite question to ask the kids I find myself working with is, "Have you ever done [insert experience here] before?" Quite often, the answer is no. Many children have never caught crabs or hermit crabs, or if they have, never quite at the volume they have at Blacks Creek. One kid in particular stands out to me, with a comment he made outside the Children's Museum. He was watching the line of people with their fishing rods, and exclaimed, "I can't believe fishing is real!" I think his excitement at gaining this new piece of information, that fishing is an activity he can get involved with, speaks wonders for the importance of our programming. We give these children a chance to experience something they may never otherwise get the chance to. Many of the children at Blacks Creek have never been there before, and they are so enamored with the thought that they can just explore for crabs and minnows for an hour. I can't even count the number of kids, and adults, who are trying fishing for the first time. You can't want to protect something unless you know what it is you want to protect. I imagine throughout this summer, we will give many individuals a reason to protect their harbor.

Seize the day!
Zach

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