Day in the Life | Trout Unlimited Restoration Day

Getting boots, gloves and snacks together the night before is a tell tale sign of a good day about to happen...and also an early morning. Luckily, the drive was only an hour and half from my house to get to the East Branch of the Ontonagon River near Kenton, MI. The morning was rainy and cold, but there is no such thing as bad weather- only bad clothes- so I made sure to dress warm so I could do my best with the restoration work. During the drive to the site the rain cleared up and the sun came out and shined so bright on the vivid orange and yellow trees, especially with the contrast of the dark, wet soil underneath. 

As I pull up to the meeting spot I see tons of cars and people so I know I'm at the right place. I found somewhere to park out of the way of any other cars and the contracted crew that was working alongside us that day, and made my way to the group. They had doughnuts and hot coffee and hot chocolate for volunteers, people were gathered together saying hello to people they knew and those they didn't. Shortly after I arrived we learned out goals for the day: to plant white pine along the bends to limit erosion and promote natural communities and plant riparian shrubs and native plants along the bank for stabilization and to also promote the vegetative communities. Trout Unlimited does a great job of explaining the importance of our cold, freshwater streams and ecosystems for salmonoid species of fish and the benefit to the area in general. Trout are indicator species of good habitat health up north due to their sensitivity to temperature...and toxins, pH, etc. 

We grabbed supplies like buckets, trowels, shovels and hip bags to put plugs in and carried it all down the hill along with the many trays of plugs. After filling my bag with a variety of plants, I headed off downstream to plant in suitable soil. There was erosion control coir mats that we avoided planting on in order for the bank to get established and stabilized before planting gets done on that. 

After planting 4 bags of plugs, the work was done. With so many volunteers ranging from Trout Unlimited staff, Forest Service, DNR, CISMA, other partners, and private citizen volunteers, a 4 hour work day was cut in half! We packed up the equipment and headed up the hill to then have lunch together and network. On the way back home it started raining again. I thought about how lucky we got to have that window of opportunity to restore native habitat on indigenous peoples day on the traditional land of the Anishinaabe.