Students attend class at the at the River Bend Science Center amphitheater. Commencing with the 2021/22 school year, area students will return to in-person educational classes at River Bend Science Center in October. What is the River Bend Science Center? River Bend Science Center is a unique outdoor educational venue that features an amphitheater, group-learning areas with shade structures, and small team “nests,” each with a table and bench, interspersed along ten acres of American River shoreline. The area was previously a dilapidated Campfire site that was reclaimed by Sacramento County. In 2012, the District Rotary 5180 and ARPF partnered with the community to make over $750,000 in improvements to revitalize this resource and make it available for educational programs. River Bend Science Center is used for youth science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education classes. This hands-on, outdoor STEM program focuses on students from grades four through seven from the school districts of Elk Grove, Folsom Cordova, Galt, Golden Trails Natomas, Sacramento City, San Juan, Twin Rivers, and Center Unified. The River Bend Science Center education program offers a multi-session course that includes: • Nature Hike: Students learn about wildlife and plant species native to the Parkway, fostering awareness and appreciation for the natural environment. • Water Ferry Engineering Design: Student teams build small rafts using natural materials found on the Parkway and then float their rafts across a stream table to simulate historical transportation and travel challenges. • Macro Aquatic Invertebrates: Students observe invertebrates found in the river, record observations, and discuss how these organisms are part of a larger, complex food web. • Living vs. Non-Living Identification: Students observe and identify living and non-living organisms along the Parkway. This session replaces Macro Aquatic Invertebrates when river levels are too high for safe access. Sacramento-area students engaged in hands-on science education at the American River. ARPF manages the River Bend Science Center education program and facility with instruction provided by the Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE). Since its inception in 2015, this innovative educational program has served 76 Sacramento-area schools and nearly 8,000 students, over 80 percent of whom were from socio-economic disadvantaged households. These kids would not have the opportunity to come experience the Parkway without the extraordinary outreach efforts and talents of SCOE and the financial and organizational support of ARPF. Sixty-six percent of students in Sacramento County attend schools with Title 1 funding under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the oldest and largest federally funded education program intended to help underprivileged students. How I help more students learn about natural resources? River Bend Science Center classes represent one of the first exposures to nature for 90 percent of our participating students. Hands-on outdoor education is a powerful experience that brings environmental awareness to life and fosters the next generation of stewardship of the Parkway. In 2020, ARPF and SCOE developed virtual field trips for use by teachers and parents. Now that in-person instruction is accessible again, ARPF hopes to expand the River
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Thousands of people visit the Parkway each year to run, bike, paddle, and enjoy. We’d like to share a few of their stories with you. Our next story is from Katie Bauer – I’ve lived in a lot of places in the Sacramento region, and recently returned here after living abroad for a time. Like many people of my generation, my family members are scattered far and wide, and I’ve moved from place to place for jobs, relationships, or school; despite making frequent trips “home” to another part of the state where I grew up and where my parents have lived for many years, I’ve always had trouble in answering the question “Where are you from?” It has only been in recent years when I’ve begun making regular visits to the American River that I’ve begun to develop what many call a “sense of place.” While living in other parts of the world, no matter how beautiful, I began to develop a deep homesickness, though it took me a while to understand what exactly it was that I was missing. Where was this “home” I felt lonesome for? When I returned to a favorite walking spot along the river for the first time after a long absence, it suddenly struck me: the landscape of this place had become so familiar and comforting to me that being away from it was what caused the ache. I missed oak woodlands with their golden-dry hills in the fall, tall stands of cottonwood with their drifting fluff suspended in the air, and the winter fog settling low like thick wool over the river. I missed the way the land looked and felt, and I missed gazing a long way downriver to where the water has bent the land and vanishes around the turn. The access to the natural spaces along the river through the Parkway is something I feel more grateful for every year. As a parent it offers fascinating places for me to take my eight-year-old son for walks, leading to hours of unplugged playtime and outdoor learning – you might find us photographing caterpillars or examining oak galls, skipping rocks or hunting for the prettiest shades of wildflowers growing along the trails. It brings tears to my eyes every time my son squeals with joy at seeing a salmon splash through the riffles on its own journey home, or when his voice instinctively lowers in hushed awe when we spot a doe and her baby resting in the tall summer grasses. It’s so important to me that children grow to know a place deeply enough to want to protect and preserve it, and I can’t imagine a better place to help my son develop this crucial wonder and respect for the land. Amongst our community of friends, the river has become a place we are drawn to for marking important occasions like birthdays or graduations; more often it’s just where we go when we want to be together. It’s also where we
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Thousands of people visit the Parkway each year to run, bike, paddle, and enjoy. We’d like to share a few of their stories with you. Our next story is from Nick Carlson – Sliding my kayak gently into the water, it’s not hard to grasp why in a few short years how this river has become so significant to me. I’ve come to know this river’s fickle moods. Its high water winters and early spring rush, its summertime playfulness, and its autumn bounty when the native Chinook salmon swim back upstream to spawn. I’ve paddled its slumberous wide curves and through its fast water rapids. I’ve watched its water roaring like thunder pouring its last dam and followed its a clear and bright emerald ribbon of water all the way to its end to dip my bow in at its milky confluence. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure.” I heartily agree. For me and many others, Northern California’s Lower American River is a rare jewel to behold. Fed by the melting snowpack of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the river is an essential source for the area’s drinking water, a productive provider of irrigation and hydroelectric power, and recreational highway for paddlers and fishermen. In its final twenty-some miles before pouring into the Sacramento River, it dispenses a peaceful serenity and magic to every creature along its wild banks despite being so near urban complexities of the city. And yes, to a certain extent it seems to be a living being in itself. I often tell people paddling with me that after we push off onto the river they will be experiencing a totally different world even though we are in the heart of a densely populated urban area. Paddling down the river never ceases to amaze me of how I can escape into a backyard of nature just a few minutes from the buzz of city traffic. Where the only sound you will hear is that of birds, the wind and that primeval summons to our primordial values, the call of distant rapids coming from downriver. As Henry David Thoreau wrote, “He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.” “A river seems a magic thing,” declared photographer Laura Gilpin, “A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.” Sitting alongside the Lower American River earlier this week, the river does seem alive as it moved steadily to the sea. Flashes of Chinook salmon among the river’s ripples, scores of gulls, ducks and turkey vultures soar and flutter above, while I catch sight of black-tailed deer bounding through the stream. A large beaver tail splash serves as a warning that I’ve come a just bit to close to his domain while chattering otters bark at my passing. The trees, vegetation, and even the rocky pilings that extend all the way along the stream add to the inspirit to this living essence.
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In previous editions of Stories from the Parkway, we’ve seen the Parkway from the perspective of an adult. Our next story is from the experiences of children. The children explain why the Parkway is so important to our community and what everyone can experience on the Parkway. Jasmine “I like the Parkway because I like to ride my bike and see the river. I like the otters. I like everything.” Lucy, Age 4 Mira, Age 8 Damion Kalia, Age 6 Ibrahim Elizabeth KJ, Age 8 These children are some of the millions of visits that occur on the American River Parkway each year. Help us continue to conserve this Sacramento treasure so our community and future generations can have the opportunity to make their own memories here. Become a member or donate today.
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Thousands of people visit the Parkway each year to run, bike, paddle, and enjoy. We’d like to share a few of their stories with you. Our next story is from David Dawson – — It was before sunrise on a cold, calm November morning here in Sacramento; but I wasn’t at home. Home, where I arose in the dark to come to the river wasn’t far away; just about two miles from where I stood in the first light of dawn. It was only a short drive through suburban streets to get there with my kayak and camera. But then, with the American River at my feet, I saw nothing of the two million human beings who surrounded me in the Sacramento metropolitan area. I saw no streets, no cars, no buildings, and no lights. In his 1912 book “The Yosemite”, John Muir said, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” And that’s what I sought, even so near to home: isolation from urban complexity, the peacefulness and serenity, the beauty and the magic of the river and the wild creatures who live within, beside and above it. It was an auspicious arrival at riverside where I launched the kayak, because it was a “twelve rabbit morning”. No fewer than a dozen jackrabbits scampered away in the headlights as I approached the river. Then, through grey mist rising, there were dimly to be seen only the gravel bar on which I stood, the river, the trees and foliage, and the emerging dawn twilight rising in the east. I launched the kayak in a quiet backwater and settled in with my camera, and even though I wasn’t going fishing, I felt the same kind of excitement, of hope, of opportunity that I felt long ago as a kid on the first day of trout season. I thought now in this 76th year of my existence, “What is it, what extraordinary thing, will I be amazed by on this day?” The kayak moved easily, gently into the current, and, as expected, I maneuvered to meet a friend, an exceptional wildlife photographer, who had launched from the other side of the river. Together we drifted wordlessly, silently downstream near the riverbank, as golden sunlight broke above the horizon and swept through the mist, low across the water. Ahead of us, emerging from the fog, a great blue heron stood tall, patient, mystical, on a log near the bank, framed by the river and the autumn colors of a tree behind. Our minds, our hearts, and our cameras captured that moment; and, no matter how many great blue herons we’d seen before, we both felt awe at the beauty of this creature in this setting. We drifted beyond the heron and went our separate ways. My friend headed downstream in search of river otters, and I moved quietly toward an inlet where two Canada geese, on
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