I did it again. Against my better judgement, I once again decided to take my environmental science class on a fishing excursion. Christmas time involves visions of sugar plums dancing in one’s head. The eve before the trip I usually have visions of deeply set fishing hooks in hands, a walleye with a death grip on someone’s fingers and soggy, wet environmentalist. Only a few of things came to fruition this trip to Pilgrim Heights.

I am still batting a thousand. We took 13 in and brought 13 back. They may have been a bit worse for the ware but all in all, we came back unscathed. Fish were caught, boating excursions we launched and fingers remained intact. I would say for the most part the trip went swimmingly including some unscheduled swimming.

As always, the trip begins with some service learning experiences before we hit the water. This year we cleaned a shelter house and planted a few trees. Interesting enough the females decided they wanted to plant trees which left the fellas to do the cleaning. After making sure the clean up was progressing as planned, I trekked up the hill to see how the silviculture experience was progressing. To say we were planting “trees” is a bit of a misnomer, we planted twigs. These trees were just babies and therefore the holes we needed to dig were not what one refer to as deep. None the less, the ladies were meticulously digging their holes to the point of wondering just how long it may take to dig a 6 inch deep hole. Had the people digging the Panama Canal taken this long, we would have a Panama puddle, a very small puddle.

None the less, trees were planted and we did out part to add a few trees to the landscape.! Having completed the “work” phase of the trip, it was time to get into the “fun” part of the day.

Sea-goers across the world were turning over in their graves as we launched our water craft.

Bryce Ehkers, Luke Holman and Amber Berendes chose a v-bottom row boat as their vehicle of choice. I’ve seen pictures of Whirling Durbishes who spun around in circles less than these people did. The distance they traveled from their starting point may have actually been negative in actuality but the distance they traveled in circles would rival the distance Lewis and Clark traveled as they navigated the Mississippi. They then decided a paddle boat was a bit more appropriate.

While the afore mentioned sailors attempted to reach the fishing hole, the rest of us were already there catching crappies like it was out job. Estimates of over 150 fish were caught throughout the day. (that may not actually be a fishing story, we did catch a lot of fish). Matt Chamberlain and Matt Olson were really hauling them in. Once the three stooges got to the fishing hole, the fishing contest between them and Mr. Bailey and I was on!

Now the contest was cut a little short. Mr. Bailey and I heard and saw Riley Gilbert frantically waving at us trying to get our attention. We soon saw the object of attention. Now, there are two basic schools of thought regarding the use of canoe. The first method most people use is to keep one’s self IN the canoe and the water OUT of the canoe. The other school of thought is the converse where as the water occupies the space previously occupied buy the canoe operator thereby placing the water IN the canoe and the operator OUT of the vessel. Harley Barnes, it seems, is a believer in the latter method of canoeing. Another commonly practiced methodology people utilize when tipping over a canoe is to try to do so in water shallow enough to stand up in order to right the vessel. Once again, Harley marches to the beat if a different drummer and decided to dump his vessel in the deepest part of the lake. Mr. Bailey and I motored our way to the water-logged vessel, towed it to shore where Harley and Riley dewaterfied the ship.

All in all it was a GR-eat day and we had a pretty good time and once again the kids were great.

They worked hard and did the school proud. A huge thanks goes out to Mr. Bailey for helping us along as well as keeping us in the fishing contest to the bitter end.