Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast

Eating Weird Creatures and Making Ecosystem Connections with Jessie Kreider

• Season 2 • Episode 1

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Welcome Jessie Kreider, the Program Director at Camp Alexander Mack and a regular volunteer at the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams. Jessie brings her passion for outdoor education and environmental stewardship to the conversation, sharing stories from her experiences as a program director and her work connecting people with nature. From teaching the importance of freshwater ecosystems to facilitating moments of awe in the outdoors, Jessie reveals how building a relationship with nature can be just as important as learning the science behind it.

We dive into the surprising and sometimes hilarious ways people engage with the environment—yes, even eating some unusual lake life. Jessie and the Lake Doctor hosts reflect on what nature has taught them and how these lessons help foster curiosity and community. This episode is a fun and thoughtful look at how the outdoors can bring us all together.

Visit lakes.grace.edu to learn more about the research mentioned in this episode and discover how you can support healthy lakes and streams in your community.

Watch full episodes and special features from season one of the podcast on our YouTube channel: @KosciuskoLakesKLAS

Learn more about the Lilly Center's work at https://lakes.grace.edu/.

Have a question we could answer on the podcast? Send an email to lakes@grace.edu or submit a comment below.

Help us improve the podcast by filling out this short survey: https://forms.gle/MzGSXHcnkEQC8T74A.


Speaker 1:

Thanks for joining us for a new season of the Lake Doctor podcast. If you're watching, you may have noticed things are a little different. Nate, where are we?

Speaker 2:

We're recording this new season from inside the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams. This summer, our studio here is the Learning Lab. It typically hosts thousands of K-12 students on field trips.

Speaker 1:

It's so inspiring to be in this space where the next generation is learning to take care of our lakes and streams. What else is new Nate?

Speaker 2:

We're refining each episode to focus on our expert guests. If you want to watch previous segments of the podcast, you can find them all on our YouTube channel, which we'll link below. We're also excited to partner with the award-winning marketing department here at Grace College to make the podcast come to life for this new season. In today's episode we're excited to have Jessie Kreider. She's a volunteer with the Lilly Center here and she's also the program director at Camp Alexander Mack.

Speaker 1:

And we might find out too, why you ate a bloodworm.

Speaker 2:

We'll talk about that, but more importantly, we'll talk about Jesse's good work and the importance of hands-on environmental education.

Speaker 1:

We are for the Lake Doctor podcast. I am so interested in learning about you as the program director at Camp Mac and you've been there. Like what did you start when you were 10? Or 21.

Speaker 3:

Okay, Tell us about you. Yeah, I grew up close to here in Columbia City. I grew out a little bit in the country and so I've always been a little bit of a country girl that just enjoys being out in nature fishing and mushroom hunting, bird watching, just those things Just any time I had an excuse to be outdoors. It's kind of what I love. Both my parents had farms that we could hang out and walk the trails. We've always had property and so we'd spend a lot of time gardening during the summer, and then, once I got into third grade, forage was a really big part of my summer, also doing projects there.

Speaker 2:

What's your favorite mushroom that you like to hunt for?

Speaker 3:

This time of year, morels, okay.

Speaker 2:

And then what about later in the summer? What do you like to look for? I?

Speaker 3:

will still go after the shaggy manes, but I love hen of the woods. It was one of my favorites.

Speaker 2:

Very cool.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So if I want to go mushroom hunting, I'm going to come hang out with you.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Yes, don't do it on your own Susie. You want to go with a professional.

Speaker 1:

For sure, I love teaching All Obviously you do, and that is so interesting to me that a field trip sparked your interest in the environment. Tell us about that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I've always loved being outside, but I don't think I ever knew how big of an impact water would have in my life.

Speaker 3:

And I was a biology major at Indiana Wesleyan and part of my field ecology class, we did a lot of minnow seining and just learning about different ecosystems and different animals.

Speaker 3:

But we did take a weekend field trip to my professor's house where he grew up in Vigo County, and so they live on a large property area that used to have lots of strip mines that were redone, and so during that we got to do a lot of things that weekend.

Speaker 3:

So we started out Friday night meeting some students from Indiana State that were doing bat research in the middle of a creek, and so we saw how they got to weigh bats and band them and all those kind of things, and then we bought some chicken livers as we came back and went out and set some trot lines for catfish overnight, and while we were out doing that we kept hearing the beavers slap their tails, as they were all around the ponds, and so we spent a lot of the weekend doing minnow staining. We did some salamander research, and then on Sunday was our time to relax, and so that was our time to go fishing a little bit more, and we sat around as a class, all of us flaying fish fried up, fish fried up potatoes and then watch some football. And so it was one of those where it got us into the field, got us experience.

Speaker 1:

And I don't count lateral line scales on fish, like I used to.

Speaker 3:

Okay, explain that please. So we did a lot of minnow and fish identification in that class as part of our field ecology class, and counting the lateral line scales on a fish is one of the ways that you can identify them.

Speaker 1:

Identify the species, the age, the species, the species. Okay, so, nate, I think you just finished a bunch of field trips with your classes. Tell us about those.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I teach two classes here at Grace College where we get to do a lot of field experience. One is general ecology, which is an entry-level class that a lot of freshmen will take, and then I also teach aquatic ecology, which is more of an upper-level class for juniors and seniors. Just finished aquatic ecology and I just love the field trips in there.

Speaker 2:

Three of them come to mind immediately. One was going to a heron rookery, a great blue heron rookery on the Tippie River, and so got all our chest waders on which I love wearing chest w waders and we went out there and people get stuck in the mud and and then you get out and it's almost this prehistoric feel of a setting where you've got these large gangly birds that are that are coming in and landing in these seemingly poorly made nests up at the very top of sycamore trees kind of in the flood plain forest of the Tippi River and just really fun. You got to watch out so you don't get pooped on and you can see eggs kind of around that, because we go there just after the young are just hatching and so you can see some of the empty eggs around on the ground and the egg shells.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, the shells, and it's kind of a pale blue, almost like a robin egg, but it's larger like a chicken egg sort of size. So that was one field trip. I also loved bringing students out to a couple mysterious lakes that we don't know a lot about in the county. So on the Lilly Center's website we have over a hundred lakes listed there, and there was two, snoke and Grider, which flow into backwater, which flows into Webster, which flows into the Tippie chain, and then Tippie River on down.

Speaker 2:

And uh, those two lakes, we didn't know how deep they were, we didn't know what the volume of the lakes were and, um, no data existed. And we found out why because these lakes are surrounded by wetlands. So you needed, we needed to carry a boat through the woods about a half mile down to the water's edge, but then it wasn't a real firm shoreline, it was wetlands that then we had to have our chest waders on. When I say we, the students, did that, I stayed on the bank and watched, but most of the time I don't do that, but in this case they were more agile and adventurous than I, and so they then in the chest waders out, then till when they got to the edge of the lake and then climbed into the boat and then we took a lot of samples and figured out how deep the lake was and we ended up not getting to Grider Lake the second lake because we ran out of time.

Speaker 2:

And then the third field trip that I think of is probably the top one, which is spelunking or exploring caves down into southern Indiana. So we were in the Bedford Indiana area and did two caves down there Sullivan and Donahue and I just love that. I just love those underground aquatic ecosystems. We had a lot of fun down there.

Speaker 1:

Did you see Jesse's eyes sparkle when you talked about?

Speaker 2:

the cave? No, I didn't. I was looking over your direction Right. I love caving in Buckner Cave down in the cemetery as well, yeah, I've been in there as well and that cave in particular has had a lot of restoration over the years. I know when I went there younger it had a lot of graffiti and stuff in there, but they've done a lot of work with cleaning that up.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we took brushes in with us and removed some of the graffiti while we were in there. So it was a field trip as part of one of the EEI conference field trips. It was a field trip as part of one of the EEI conference field trips, so in the Environmental Education Association of Indiana. So those were our field trips for one of our conferences.

Speaker 2:

Cool, and we've had our educators at the Lilly Center be part of that conference every year as well. That's really cool. I love that sort of hands-on service but also learning at the same time.

Speaker 1:

So, jesse, you wear multiple hats not only your program officer at Camp Mac, but you're a volunteer here at the Lilly Center, and you've done some really interesting other volunteer work Master, naturalist, Yep. So tell us a bit about that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So when we talk about networking especially, I did my master naturalist class in 2019 here in Kosciuszko County and I think Kosciuszko County has a really great master naturalist program for how much they get you in the field, and so every meeting you show up, you get some book that is a resource, and then we get in the field and then do a little bit of extra learning and just the volunteer that go along with that.

Speaker 3:

So I had done some stuff with Lilly Center before that with Lakes Adventure Days, but especially at first year getting my volunteer hours and then saying I want to keep my advanced master naturalist every year after this looking for areas in Cascasa County. So Lilly Center is one place I came to, started Started with Lakes Adventure Days and then moved more into the classroom here, also with Soil and Water, doing their rafting trips on Grassy Creek into Tippie Lake, and now I try to do as many of those as I can with them. And you talk about those field trips started those in 2019. And even this week at camp I had a mother as she got off the bus goes. You are a raft captain.

Speaker 3:

When my older son went on that rafting trip and you pointed out an osprey to us while you were on that raft, and so there's some just great moments and memories associated with these field trips.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Excellent.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've been on that rafting trip before too. Soil and Water does a great job with that and pulling in volunteers from around the community. Really, whenever we can get kids out in God's creation learning about it in a hands-on way, I think it just adds more to their learning and then leaves a lasting impression for them to be a better steward in the future.

Speaker 1:

So, nate, why do you think those field trips make a difference to kids?

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, if any of us think back to some of our earliest memories, often those memories have different senses associated with them.

Speaker 2:

Often one or more of the five senses and smells are often a really good trigger of past memories some good, some bad for some of us, but the senses, they help us remember and they really leave an impact.

Speaker 2:

And so when you think about being in a traditional classroom, at a desk, there's not a lot of senses that are really firing and engaged there, right, whereas then you transport that child out into a stream and chest waders where maybe the chest waders are really hot because it's August and it's 85 degrees, or maybe they fall in the water and now they're all wet, or the chest waders smell a little bit, or the thing that they're picking up is rough or smooth or maybe prickly, or they're hearing the birds around them in the trees and hearing the rustling leaves with the wind, and maybe catching a smell of you know, a fragrance going past them, of a flowering tree that's in bloom, and those memories just stick with you and those are often positive memories.

Speaker 2:

And so these kids then have positive connotations with this natural environment and so in the future, when they have some position of influence in a community or business owner or a property owner. They're going to remember those positive experiences in nature and they're going to try to help protect that nature then, with whatever influence they might have. So I think those hands-on experiences are just so, so great.

Speaker 1:

There's a phrase that you use you want kids to become.

Speaker 2:

Water literate? Yes, and when you think of literacy, it's an immersive sort of an experience, right? And so we sometimes, literally our students, get immersed in the water when they fall in, and some of those are the most exciting and most influential sort of moments. Or students literally get stuck in the mud and you have to pull them up, you know, by the legs of their waders, to get them out of the mud, and those can be just lasting experiences. Sometimes it starts to move someone towards curiosity, to learn more, which I think is really fun too. Have you ever seen that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we talk about asking questions a lot. So I did have a teacher a couple years ago come to me before they scheduled a trip and said do you notice that there's some kids that don't even know what a grasshopper is? And so it's really getting them out into nature. So with field trips and with our classes, there may be some basic learning objectives, but so many times nature is leading the trip.

Speaker 3:

So, as I did kind of a geology class this last year, we're doing a geology class and we're building some sandcastles, and this was with our homeschoolers and hearing them go. There's a turtle in our sandcastle and there was some turtle eggs that had overwintered and as they're digging up their sandcastle, there was a turtle nest hatching on our beach at Camp Mac, and so these kids ended up with two turtles inside their sandcastles and had no clue where they came from. And so those kind of moments lead you to asking questions of like how and what and why. And so, yeah, asking questions of like how and what and why, and so, yeah, experiential education is what we do, of getting people into the field, into those ecosystems, to see what nature's doing, and you never know what's going to happen each day.

Speaker 2:

And that's a really good point to jump in there. You know, we as teachers, as educators, we often plan out things lesson plans, curriculum, all of that but some of that stuff goes out the window when you're out in the field because a rainstorm comes through you didn't anticipate, or some challenge comes up or turtles start hatching in the middle of the program. And then it's really exciting because you just kind of move in different directions and pivot to a new learning objective. And oftentimes it's really exciting because you just kind of move in different directions and pivot to a new learning objective and oftentimes it turns out better than what you had planned it.

Speaker 3:

Or a bald eagle lands in a tree in front of us right.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, I can remember Speaking of that. I can remember, yeah, being in Cherry Creek, which flows into Winona Lake, just back behind us here down the hill, and I was just talking with my students about bald eagles and it was about 100 yards away from the lake and right as if on cue, the bald eagle flew from the lake, right over us, carrying a fish in its talons, and they were all like Dr Botch, did you plan that out? I was like, no, really, I didn did it, but it was a really cool uh experience so we call those teachable moments too yes, right, yes parts that aren't planned.

Speaker 3:

But um, I'll show on a picture earlier of as we're collecting macroinvertebrates and we'll talk about those later. I have a picture of a food chain in a bucket. I had caught a large dragonfly nymph and also caught a baby catfish, and in the bucket the dragonfly nymph was eating the catfish and so kind of a reverse of maybe what we thought the food chain would be.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we actually in the aquarium right behind us here we have a channel catfish and if you this size, one obviously would be eating that dragonfly in its larval stage. But if it's a small enough catfish, the reverse would happen.

Speaker 1:

So one of the things you used, a word I am not familiar with macroinvertebrates. Macroinvertebrates, what are those?

Speaker 3:

So we are looking at creatures without a backbone, so a lot of times our insects or our mollusks, our little crustaceans, and they are things that can tell us about the health of the water by where they're living.

Speaker 2:

And the other part of the word macro, indicating that it doesn't need to be seen with a microscope. So we also have what we could consider microinvertebrates, that would be like zooplankton, really the tiniest little animals that live in our lakes and streams. But the macro ones you can identify typically without needing to use a microscope, so you can just see them just with your eyes.

Speaker 1:

So example of something without a backbone is a.

Speaker 3:

Like a dragonfly nymph or a leech or mayfly nymph.

Speaker 2:

Bloodworms is my favorite Okay.

Speaker 1:

Now, before we were filming, you were talking about bloodworms. What are those and what did you do with that? That one's on you, yeah yeah, that's on me.

Speaker 2:

So bloodworms, they live in the bottom muck sediment at the bottom of a lake and they're an indicator of low oxygen conditions. So we collect them for that purpose. But a few years ago, as we're collecting them with the students, they are a bright red worm down in the dark black, brown muck and so they stand out and so I thought I dared one of my students hey, you should eat that. I'm sure that would be really nutritious and stuff. And so it's kind of turned into this thing now with my classes. The students are daring each other to eat bloodworms. I ate one last year as well. I feel much healthier now after eating one. No, I'm just kidding, but these are super tiny little worms I believe they're chironomids specifically, but commonly called bloodworms and they will actually that's their larval stage and they go through metamorphosis and then emerge as an adult fly and then will fly out of that body of water after a certain time.

Speaker 1:

Oh so that song about she swallowed a fly just popped in my head Right after a certain time. Oh so that song about she swallowed?

Speaker 3:

a fly just popped in my head and I think, the macroinvertebrates. When we are going out with nets and students and campers, that tends to be sometimes a spark of interest into the aquatic world. So a lot of times we're keeping kind of a score of something we call the PTI index or pollution tolerance index, and so some of them have a score of four, some have a score of three and they can score all the creatures that they find and come up with a total that tells them how healthy is the water that they are surveying. So they're not having to do chemical tests, they're looking at the biology of the water and seeing how healthy it is. So when you see them making a connection to say, hey, I just found a mayfly, this is really healthy water, like it's clear, and they're making that connection because of what they found.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we call those bioindicators right. So they're indicating the health of the stream based on biology, which is themselves, and so some of the macroinvertebrates are really intolerant to pollution, which would mean they'd only be found in a really healthy, clean stream, whereas other ones are very tolerant of pollution, and so, based on the tolerance or intolerance, they get a different score and, as Jesse said, then they can add that up and they can get a sense of how healthy that stream is, and so they're sort of like doing the detective work, and it doesn't take a whole lot of training for them to be able to start to assess the health of a stream.

Speaker 1:

So Camp Mack is located on Wabi Lake, correct? And how do people know about Camp Mack and how do they sign up? And if I had a kiddo that needed to go to summer camp, how would I connect?

Speaker 3:

One of the best places to see us is on Facebook. To look us up there, camp Alexander Mac and they get to see lots of pictures and videos from camp. Also, more information is at campmacorg. So C-A-M-P-M-A-C-K dot O-R-G. It has a lot of information about our summer camps, but we are a year-round facility. We are doing programs every day of the year. We do one-day retreats, we do summer camps and a lot of other places also use us as their summer camp location.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, our kids in particular have been there as campers during some of the school year camps and our kids just loved it. It was a highlight of their week Every week, all the different sorts of things they got to learn and experience.

Speaker 1:

Do you do programs for adults?

Speaker 3:

too. We do so some of our one-day retreats. I've been doing some family programming lately as far as wildflower hikes, I do a prairie walk in August and then a tree identification one, Especially things around the water. With being on Wabi Lake One of our favorite things is coming up. In August we do a sailing 101 day where we teach people how to sail and send them out on sunfish and then we a week later do an advanced sailing day where they can come back and we'll run some drills and then do kind of a Camp Max style regatta on the lake.

Speaker 3:

That's pretty cool.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

You were talking about networking. Tell us about your favorite networking experiences.

Speaker 3:

Right. So when we're talking about networking, so many people talk about where you have to meet up, and it's usually in kind of a business setting, kind of more formal-ish, inside somewhere, and I said in the world of biology and campers and just being outdoors around water. Usually networking happens in waders in the middle of a creek, and so it is, you know, a friend calling you up and saying, hey, do you want to go check out this fen I've heard about, or do you want to help us collect mud puppies for research? Like absolutely. And so the amount of people I've met through networking in the middle of a river or a lake has just really taken me to where I am today.

Speaker 1:

And Nate, you like to do networking too, but you have kind of an unusual place.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love fishing with people going on one of our local lakes, in fact, one of our former students and a previous guest on this podcast, aaron Voril. He works for the DNR at a fish hatchery by day, but by night he has his own charter business on the side and so he's taken me and different friends out before and it's a great opportunity. Some people love the golf course. I tend to love the lake.

Speaker 3:

I do a lot of fishing also and I love teaching fishing. So years ago I took training to be a crew captain through Indiana DNR and so I love working the fishing pond down at the state fair, and first fish is such an exciting thing. The first time somebody catches a fish I will go nuts and I will celebrate it. And I love doing fishing derbies. We do them with my family on the farm pond, but I've also done them during father-son retreats where we taught them how to make hand casters out of soda cans and went fishing with those. We did fishing awards. You know smallest fish caught, largest fish oops, I caught. You know weirdest thing caught? And it's just fun just to get out and go fishing and get some new experiences.

Speaker 1:

Okay, tell us a fish story. What was your most unusual thing you caught.

Speaker 3:

Oh, I'd say probably not me, but identifying things for people on the Lake Association Facebook page. During ice fishing, you never know what you're going to catch. While ice fishing it's a time where they'll kind of eat everything. We catch a lot of crappies. Sometimes we have Northern Pike come up through the ice, but I remember a couple of years someone goes what did I just catch? And mud puppies are one that will bite on your ice fishing poles quite a bit in the winter. So that's one that can throw people off because they have no idea what they caught.

Speaker 2:

If anybody wants to see a mud puppy, we have one here at the Lilly Center. Her name is Mabel.

Speaker 1:

If anybody wants to see a mud puppy.

Speaker 2:

We have one here at the Lilly Center. Her name is Mabel, she's adorable and she's in our lobby aquarium.

Speaker 1:

I will check that out now that we're at the Lilly Center doing our podcast Pretty exciting. Do you have pictures of her on your website?

Speaker 2:

Yes, we sure do?

Speaker 1:

What is your website Nate?

Speaker 2:

Lakesgraceedu.

Speaker 1:

Thank you yeah.

Speaker 3:

And I think Mabel the mud puppy is an awesome ambassador for the Lily Center because when you look at current games and things that kids are playing, axolotls are something that are really big in popular culture right now. So when kids come to the Lily Center and get to see the wall of aquariums, they'll see Mabel the mud puppy and go, oh, is that an axolotl? And we're like no, it's a mud puppy. And so then we get to talk about the differences in geography of where they live and just kind of different species. But she makes a really great ambassador to current culture.

Speaker 2:

Right, that's really cool.

Speaker 1:

What kind of mud puppies live here, and are there other types of axolotls that live in?

Speaker 3:

Indiana. So axolotls only live in Mexico in one lake, and so they're one that have been bred, and so we're seeing them a lot more in pet stores. Nate, I know, could definitely talk about more about mud puppies. I love going down south where the hellbenders are, and they have one of my favorite nicknames ever. That's kind of silly, but they're also called the snot otter.

Speaker 2:

Snot otter.

Speaker 3:

Yes. Okay, because they're long and slippery, they kind of look like an otter, but they're really mucousy and kind of gross, so I love weird nature.

Speaker 2:

We actually. When we were just caving in southern Indiana just a few weeks ago, then we saw an aquatic salamander in the cave, and so it must have been a hellbender, because it was too far south for it to have been a mud puppy, which is more in northern Indiana.

Speaker 1:

Jesse, I understand you also teach lifeguarding.

Speaker 3:

I do Yep, so I became a lifeguard in 2004. So I took that class through college and so I've been a lifeguard since then and started teaching about 10 years ago, and it's really fun to watch people grow in their knowledge and to grow in their confidence. And so some of the lifeguards when I kind of talk about the success stories, some of those who may have been the most scared to begin with are now managers at other pools and lakes. A couple of them have trained to be EMTs, and so it's really neat to see where they go from, where they can start, and lifeguarding on a lake is a little bit different than a pool, and so they spend a lot of time in the water with me inspecting things underwater or working on boats and things like that.

Speaker 1:

I love that. You are a prime example of what a lifelong learner is, and the many hats that you wear. How can people be involved in the Lilly Center? Jesse's a volunteer. How do others get involved?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we have a number of volunteer positions specifically in our education area. So we have field trips that come into the building here, especially during some of the colder months, and then we do a lot of outdoor education kind of earlier in the fall and also later in the springtime, and we've got a number of summer programs coming up as well, and so those volunteers can help with teaching lessons, they can help with being a teaching assistant, they can help with kind of moving students from one station to another as they're rotating around. So there's a number of things in the area of education. We also have our big Lake Adventure Day, which Jesse mentioned earlier, and we always need people helping with the fishing station.

Speaker 2:

Here we've got hundreds of fourth graders, many of which are fishing for the very first time, getting that opportunity maybe to catch their first fish, as you mentioned before, jesse. And we don't want to see hooks and ears or noses, we want to see hooks with bait on them and successfully cast it out into the lake water, and so having extra hands with that is often really helpful. And then we have boat captains who help us take out sampling. Take us out our research team out sampling on the lakes. Each week during the summer, memorial Day to Labor Day. We have native plants around the building here, and so we can always use extra help with people who maybe have a green thumb or maybe they don't yet but they want to develop a green thumb to help us with some of those native plantings, because those are a great example then to other people in the community for what those plants look like and how to care for them.

Speaker 1:

And certainly the Indiana Naturalist. Part of that getting that designation is volunteering, so that's one of the ways that you help maintain your designation.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's both volunteering and education, so continuing education every year. And so there's been events. I've come to Lilly Center also during the winter. One of them they did a winter tree identification which was a great one to be at. And so there's so many opportunities here in Kosciuszko County and places I volunteered with. So a lot of my hours lately have come from Lilly Center or Soil and Water with the Rafting Trips. But we also have the Watershed Foundation, we have the Wawasee Area Conservancy, you know, and there's so many. Just Kassiasko has so much water and so many great opportunities for that.

Speaker 1:

We sure do. So I learned something new We've got 100 lakes in Kassiasko County and two secret lakes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, or little studied lakes maybe yeah.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

They're still on the map but we still have pictures of them.

Speaker 1:

But little studied. Jesse, you are a volunteer here at the Lily Center, but what specifically do you teach?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I come here and I'll kind of teach whatever class they want me to. Sometimes I'm with the sand tables, sometimes I'm with younger elementary students and we get to hold the crayfish and Carl the painted turtle and get to learn all about them. But one of them that I've probably taught more often than not is a class on plankton, which uses microscopes to look at some of the things that we can also find in our water.

Speaker 1:

And would those be a micro?

Speaker 3:

Yes, they would be micro invertebrates, so something. They're so tiny that we need to use a microscope to look at them with.

Speaker 2:

So a few things we have coming up at the Lilly Center here over the next few months as we do stories in STEM and some of our local libraries, and we have critter encounters, which are always a big hit for families to come and learn about different aquatic critters. We have a different one that's featured each time. We do a swamp stomp later this summer, which should be really exciting for people, and then we've got a fall hike coming up as well, and people can get all that info at our website, lakesgraceedu.

Speaker 1:

I did a fall hike one year. That was really a lot of fun.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and at camp we have opportunities all throughout the year some family events, retreats, but we also do homeschool days that we do eight months out of the year. So we offer a Monday and a Wednesday option each month, september through April, with different things at camp. So it it may be outdoor learning, but it also might be a day where we're doing cooking and learning about baking and all sorts of things. So, but we also have those hikes and things like the sailing days at camp are also opportunity to remove invasive species out in our prairie, which Nate's done before with the education team also.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that was a lot of fun.

Speaker 1:

So what type of invasive species are living in your prairie? Which Nate's done before with the education team also yeah, that was a lot of fun. So what type of invasive species are living in your prairie?

Speaker 3:

So back in like the 80s, it was thought that things like honeysuckle and autumn olive would make really great habitat and food for our birds and other animals. And we learned that it's kind of junk food for them, the berries. They don't really eat them a whole lot, but those plants spread a lot, and so we have five acres of prairie that we are working to restore by removing the honeysuckle and autumn olive on the prairie, so that's something homeowners can also pay attention to and plant things that are native species.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, some other ones that have moved out of people's landscaping would be like. Japanese barberry is another one, and burning bush, burning bush is another one. Those berries oftentimes will be eaten by a bird, and then the bird flies out into a natural ecosystem and they poop and the seed then comes out, and with a little fertilizer with it, and then a new plant will start out in the middle of woods or in a prairie.

Speaker 3:

and then we see a lot on our lakes too, and so when you think about moving your boat from lake to lake, some of them are spread by fragmentation. So when you chop that plant up into little bits, each one of those grows into a new plant, and so the education about the zebra mussels in our lakes or some of the different plants, of how to prevent the spread from lake to lake, is really important. Uh, one of them that we just found in Wabi about a year ago was we did find starry stonewort um in our lake, and I remember on Tippie Lake when we were rafting running into starry stonewort and you just couldn't move the raft. It makes such a thick mat, and so we work to educate on that also.

Speaker 1:

So can that plant be transmitted, not just through human interaction with the plant, but do do ducks also transport it?

Speaker 2:

Oh, I don't know. I I mean, I suppose, if there's a small enough fragment that gets sort of into the feathers of waterfowl and they, they fly, but it still stays moist enough, so it doesn't, you know, die and then they go to a new body of water and I think the bigger thing would be to think about our watersheds and how everything is connected.

Speaker 3:

So when I look at the lake that I'm on on Wabi, it's not a standalone lake. There is an inlet and an outlet and so we're connected with Dewart Lake. So Dewart Lake runs through Hammond Ditch into Wabi, and so I think that's an important thing is to look at all the connections through the different watersheds within our county. Koskiasa County is really special that we're part of four different watersheds and so even here at Lilly Center and at Camp Mac, we're in different watersheds, right?

Speaker 1:

Tell me who inspires you, who inspired you to move forward in this environmental work.

Speaker 3:

There's definitely lots of people that get you to where you're going and so on. The people I've always said I want to grow up to be Darcy Zolman. She taught my first Hoosier Riverwatch class I took oh man, it's probably been, it's been over 20 years ago, but also she ended up kind of still in my life through Project Wet, project Wild classes. I ended up doing an advanced river watch class a while back too, and then when I started doing the rafting trips, there's Darcy again, also just through EAI.

Speaker 3:

Fred Woolley, who used to be a naturalist at Pekagan State Park he's one that taught me how to do a nature hike as part of that conference, is one of the classes and being able to reconnect with him in the last couple of years. He's working with Blue Heron Ministries now and just has some awesome property that he showed us around also. So there's some people just connecting with them. Another would be Carl Weaver, who started the marine biology trip with Goshen High School, and next year is going to be the 50th year of the trip, so I just returned from my fifth year of helping as an instructor on a high school marine biology trip also.

Speaker 1:

Nate, who's been your inspiration?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I would. It would be hard to narrow it down more than just three, and so I'll sort of start in succession. So I had first Mr Dewey in seventh grade I don't even know his first name, I just know him as Mr Dewey and he would take us outside all the time. As far as seventh grade science, In fact, we did a weekend sort of camp experience where we had to make this raft that got us across the stream to a wetland where then we walked through. We didn't have waders or anything, so we had leeches all over our legs and stuff. It was so fun. And then we had to sort of make sure the raft would still get us back across the stream and safely. That was really fun.

Speaker 2:

And then I think of when I was in college, John Korstad. He was the instructor of the limnology class that I took up at Au Sable Environmental Institute. That was the first time I had heard the word limnology and loved how that field brought together all of these different areas of science ecology and biology, and chemistry, geology to study lakes and streams. And then in grad school at University of Michigan, David Allen he was my PhD advisor and wrote his own stream ecology textbook and I got to take stream ecology with him and I can still remember an experience up in Northern Michigan in the middle of the winter doing sampling in a stream and waders. People were doing electrofishing so you couldn't put your hands in the water, You'd get electrocuted. And the snow is falling and we're collecting macroinvertebrates with nets and stuff, but again, don't put your hands in the water.

Speaker 3:

And it was just so much fun and those experiences really helped me decide how I wanted to then teach my own students now today and just really inspirational yeah and I think a lot of my background too came from my professor, dr Conrad Indiana Wesleyan, who encouraged me to go into outdoor education, and so I worked at YMCA store camps in Jackson, Michigan, for six years and so when we talk about macroinvertebrates, a lot of it came from there.

Speaker 3:

When I first started they had an aquatic ecologist class that they would offer. That was a two-hour class. We worked with all of Detroit and Toledo public schools while I was there and we realized I was the only one who knew the materials for that class and there were things I learned at Hoosier River Watch. So it's looking at dissolved oxygen and phosphates and nitrates and pH and temperature and then mixing it with the macroinvertebrates also and pH and temperature and then mixing it with the macroinvertebrates also. And so we also had a microscopic ponderings class that most of our classes chose year-round, where we collect those macroinvertebrates. So sometimes I was teaching that class a dozen times or more a week Would even cut a hole through the ice to put a net through the ice and find the insects and things then. So a lot of that came from my experience in Michigan, also the insects and things then, so a lot of that came from my experience in Michigan also.

Speaker 1:

You know what I appreciate about you both is how you've articulated the importance of relationships with people and with the environment and with your faith, thank you. Thanks very much for sharing, thanks for listening to this episode of the Lake Doctor podcast. You can share your thoughts or submit a question by leaving a comment or sending an email to lakes at grace dot edu.

Speaker 2:

Listening to this podcast is just the first step to making your lake cleaner and healthier. To making your lake cleaner and healthier. Visit lakesgraceedu for more information about our applied research and discover some tangible ways that you can make a difference on your lake.

Speaker 1:

We'll see you next time. The doctor is in.