River Quest: Waters, Wonders & a Sense of Place

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Their St. Louis River Quest passports in hand, a group of sixth-graders breezed into Station D5. Excitedly bobbing and weaving around a small aquarium set up on a table, the students from Holy Rosary School in Duluth immediately dove into work – this is fast-paced learning.

Within the allotted 11 minutes, many had an opportunity to slide on a pair of protective gloves and dip their fingers into a murky liquid inside the fish tank, barely brushing fingertips over the separated water and vegetable oil, swishing it lightly and giggling abundantly.

Other students soaked up the oil, applying a pad made of material used by the U.S. Coast Guard to soak up oil if it leaks into the St. Louis Bay or Lake Superior during spills or accidents.

While the students worked the water, two Coast Guard officers explained their roles during Great Lakes oil-spill emergencies as they uncoiled an 8-inch-thick, 10-foot-long, white aquatic boom whose outer membrane cloaked an oleophilic (oil-loving) absorbent barrier.

Station D5 – Oil Spill Cleanup – was one of eight interactive learning stations set up last year for the St. Louis River Quest inside Pioneer Hall within the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center. Each of the stations has a sponsor that contributes financial support and expert resources.

“This was better even than I imagined it to be,” says Holy Rosary sixth-grader Angela Park. “It was really cool how these guys manage to suck up the oil and help our waterways.”

“It was amazing – a one-time experience,” Angela says of the day’s activities. “It can’t happen again. It can only happen once.”

For the kids, it does happen only once – during their sixth-grade year.

For the adults who administer the program, it happens again each year and has so for the last 20.

This is River Quest, which in 2013 for the 21st year will offer 1,200 sixth-graders from the region a full day of scientific mental intake – in 11-minute bites. The event continues over 31⁄2 days with different groups each day.

“It’s a crazy rush to the finish,” quips Adele Yorde, public relations manager for the Duluth Seaway Port Authority and one of the organizers of the event for the last five years. The program starts each year with the gathering of support from 15 to 20 local organizations and businesses with water ties.

“It covers so many aspects – business and industry, agencies, nonprofits as well as academia,” says Doug Jensen, aquatic invasive species coordinator for Minnesota Sea Grant and a River Quest participant for perhaps all 21 years. “It’s just a great synergy each year when we get together to begin planning it, everybody brings something to the table.”

The idea of the educational St. Louis River Quest grew from what some might consider an unusual source.

In 1993, a group of local business leaders and waterfront companies initiated the educational outreach program after one lifelong Duluthian, John Goldfine, floated his thoughts about how Twin Ports area waterways could be used to benefit young people. John is part of the family business that, in 1993, owned and operated the Vista Fleet in Duluth and the Southern Belle Riverboat in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The Vista Fleet has since been sold, but the new owners continue participation.

John initiated a conversation with Kurt Soderberg, at the time the executive director of the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District, better known as WLSSD.

“John called me on the spur of the moment to go to lunch,” Kurt recalls in a written history of the program. “We talked about the St. Louis River, the efforts we were making to clean it up back then, and a unique educational program that the Goldfines had initiated in Chattanooga to get people there reconnected to the Tennessee River. … So, it was John who gave our waterfront community the germ of an incredible idea and encouraged the rest of us to run with it.”

Close to 20 waterfront-related industries stood ready to help – including the Duluth Seaway Port Authority, one organization that helps to organize River Quest today. The first St. Louis River Quest in May 1993 attracted almost 800 sixth-graders from Duluth, Hermantown, Proctor and Superior. Since then about 16,000 local students have participated. The annual traffic is now about 1,200 youths each year.

Mainly the Vista Star has served as the water link for River Quest and the learning stations have been set up on the boat. But last year, the learning stations were expanded into Pioneer Hall.

“The cool part is that while the event has continued, the event has also evolved,” Doug says. “There’s just not enough space on one boat.”

This year about 1,400 sixth-graders from 14 schools will be taught by 50 educators and supported by about 40 public and private organizations concerned with the St. Louis Bay – and cheered on by the 100 volunteers who help out each year.

“I have the attitude that if one kid out of the thousands that have been through the River Quest day pursues a career path in environmental science due to this event

having sparked a passion, then that’s a hugely successful event,” John says. “I think that when this started 20 years ago the store of knowledge about where we live here on the St. Louis River was smaller back then than it is today. The event grows with the knowledge. … As we get smarter regarding the bay, I hope River Quest will become a bigger event as well.”

 Last year, River Quest experienced a 25 percent increase in student participation.

All of those involved with the program are impressed by how much the students really learn in 11 minutes at those stations.

Last year, the stations covered everything from pollution prevention, soil conservation and river

cleanup to maritime commercial activity, boating and water safety, fish habitats and preventing aquatic invasive species.

“They’re like sponges,” says Adele. “They really do soak up some very valuable practical information” – topics like how to stay safe on water, not to release

aquarium fish in lakes and streams, that runoff from washing cars on the driveway eventually ends up in the Lake, what kinds of ships and cargo move through the port.

Ben Glisczinski, a Holy Rosary sixth-grader who loves all things biological, found fascination with the stream

table set up by the U.S. Forest Service. The table demonstrated movement of water and the effects of natural and artificial structures.

“We learned about why the estuary is so important and how we can change things to make our estuary and our lake better – especially when species harmful to the estuary creep in,” says Ben. “I really liked learning here about how the watersheds flow. It was different to hear about the watersheds as more than places where rain falls. Instead, it was more about the watershed as a system – wetlands or streams or rivers.”

Briefly visiting multiple learning stations keeps the students engaged, says Jim Gearns, a retired science

curriculum coordinator from the Duluth Public Schools who volunteers at the event. “The kids stay attentive.  They also can put a person’s face with the new information. Some of the stations also have hands-on activities. So, it’s not just sit-and-listen. The kids are active participants in the learning going on around them.”

One of last year’s students, Elena Stanley, part of the Holy Rosary group, got a vivid lesson in surviving the Lake’s cold water.

At the station called “Cool Hand Luke,” sponsored by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, retired teacher

Andrea Asleson used two large cooler-sized chests of frigid water to demonstrate what happens in cold water – and the importance of a life vest to keep afloat.

“We talk to them about safety on rivers and lakes and about how to save yourself if you do fall through any ice,” Andrea says as the kids tested their cold-water endurance by plunging their hands into frozen water.

Andrea dropped small screws and bolts in the chests for students to pick up in the freezing water – after leaving their hands in the water for a time.

“When I put my hand in there, it was really weird because when you’re cold usually you get more energetic and moving,” says Elena. But in the frigid water, the hands grow numb and picking up anything becomes difficult.

The learning stations on the Vista Star are not the only education the boat provides.

Adele Yorde, who works daily around the waterfront with her port authority job, says one of her lasting memories of River Quest is from that first year when she saw a Twin Ports-area student who obviously was experiencing a trip onto the water for the first time.

“It was the very first time in her whole life she had been on a boat,” Adele says. The girl hesitated to get into the tour boat and was anxious as the Vista Star headed into the harbor, Adele recalls, but soon she relaxed and the world of water – the rest of her Twin Ports neighborhood – opened to her. “What started as fear was just fascination by the end of the trip.”

Even students who may have been on water before find thrills on the boat part of the field trip.

“It was really fun,” Ben says.  “Just being out on the top of the Vista Star – it was awesome.  The wind was blowing.  It was just cool to be up high – out in the air – looking down at the water 40 feet away.”  

When the deck clears at the end of the day, the students head home to write entries for the Captain Ray Skelton River Quest Essay and Poetry Contest. This will be the sixth year of the writing contest named for the late Captain Ray Skelton, a program founder and longtime Duluth Seaway Port Authority employee.

Marshall School student Marina Melby’s essay on the water table won last year. “It was interesting to learn about the Lake and all the rivers and everything and places around it,” says Marina. “I wrote about what I learned. I enjoyed learning from the stations.”

She especially appreciated – and used in her essay – information from Chad Pregracke, who founded the nonprofit Living Lands and Waters, which contracts for waterway cleanup projects nationwide.

“I also was interested in all the stuff Chad had pulled out of the river,” says Marina.

For his part, Chad, whose station was sponsored by Sappi Fine Paper, felt the River Quest day well worth his time. “I think it’s good to educate young people – just expose them to things. River Quest has given kids the opportunity for the last 20 years. The truth is you never know how you’re going to affect a young person by something you show them. River Quest gives kids an opportunity to be exposed to the different positive things that are going on in the lakes and rivers themselves.”  

River Quest also leaves these young people with a sense of their local place and of the stewardship challenges that will fall to them in the future, says Adele.

“We need to let the next generation know that as we pass tremendous resource on to them … it’s in good shape and they are responsible for it.”

Thomas Vaughn is a freelance writer in Duluth who covers historic and contemporary topics.