People of the Big River 2026 - Judy Bergevin

 Today we woke up and got ready to go to this seed extractory place here in Bend, OR. We talked to Alex Enna again and met Kayla Herriman and she told us about herself and that she works all over the country to go to seed extractorys, she's worked at this extractory for 12 years and she did some stuff before she started there. We went around talking about ouurselves and when I mentioned that I am keeping my options open she said that she doesn't believe a career ladder but she thinks it's more like a messy career web and that you do get to try other jobs and paths but usually you end up doing something you really like and end up doing that but then you get all this experience that is good when you do it. She did tech school here in Bend and she got her bachelors in Natural Resources. There are so many nurserys across the country and most she goes to but at the same time there are other people doing the same so there isn't a heavy workload on one or two people. She menti...

 Today we woke up early to get out on the field to do our activity for the day, count some Pumice Moonwort and collect data to show where they're popping up at. We all packed into our cars and actually got to leave the tiniest bit early, when we got up we all got lunches and everything ready because we were going out to a very long day with no bathrooms, no Wi-Fi and barely any service, and nothing really in sight. As soon as we got there we got to talk to Marlo Fisher and she told us about how she is a District Botanist and that she doesn't get to do this to often but we would be surveying for Pumice Moonwort and how many would be out there because they have points on the maps that they have checked but there are a few areas that they didn't survey and we could put new points on their map where we would find these plants at.  At first we started by spacing out by the road and walking West first and we had to stay a certain distance away from each other, then if we found an...

Today we woke up and got ready as per usual and we got ready to, as Jessica said, “be tourists”. We all had to hurry a bit to make lunches and grab something to eat really quick because we wanted to leave early to make sure we got there to listen to Christine give us her quick lesson and so we could have enough time to tour the museum ourselves before we took a bus ride to the top of the cinder cone we would talk about. We left here early and we went to the Lava Lands visitor center to meet with Alex Enna, before we really walked around or anything we sat to listen to Alex tell us about himself. He said he is a Partnership Manager and that he kind of oversees the burning, thinning, and other things for the fire management I think and that he has 50,000 hours of volunteer work. He’s done trail management; he was a firefighter for 20 years before trail management he did the fuels program. Then we met Christine Hughes, who has been a ranger for about two months at the Deschutes National...

 Today I woke up a little later than I wanted to, I wanted to wake up earlier than we needed to just so I could go enjoy the water before we left but we needed to pack up get ready and take soil samples before we left, so we all woke up about 6:30 ish, I got up to change and start packing but I did a little of packing then I went out to get the stuff out for breakfast and to make lunches. After I got some of my stuff together and set everything on the table I packed the last of everything and we tried to eat breakfast but then we got hurried to make lunches so we could go sample, and we did get everything together and went to sample a little down the path where we wanted to swim at. We got everything done at about 8am, then we finished packing things onto the truck and we got onto the cars and headed out for the gas station one more time before we left. We got to the station and we waited but Jessica headed out for Hood River where we would be gassing up and heading to Warm Sprin...

 Today I slept in a little longer even though I didn't think I was going to, but time goes on. We had what felt like a very slow morning even though I slept in. We kind of took a bit of time to eat our cereal and get our lunches ready before we had to head out to the gas station again. We left a little early after cleaning everything up to use the wifi here at the gas station. We met up with Jeanette Burkhart, David Lindley, and Gerard Foley to go into the closed area for the Yakama Nation and go start putting up man made beaver dams and help restore this stream to get beavers to come back to the area. Where we parked we could see this tree that was dead and burnt and they told us that the Cougar Creek fire ran through there and that it was started by a lightning strike near here at Glenwood then it made its way to the meadows there. After we got to the site we sat and did introductions, Jeanette said she is the Watershed planner then David Lindley said he is the Habitat Coordinato...

 Today I woke up earlier than I needed to but unintentionally. I woke up at 6am but I saw this big spider in our tent because we left the door just the littlest bit open and it got in, I hate spiders so I wasn't trying to do anything and it is Sunday so I can't kill it. I tried to lead it out the little spot it came in but it wouldn't go then it fell on my bed and I was trying to at least pick it up with a shoe but it crawled under the pants I had in the corner on my side, so I wasn't trying to look for it and I just decided to get out and go bathroom since that's why I was staying awake. After I went bathroom I wasn't going back in there so I went and sat on the log closest to us and chilled for a bit but I wanted something to lean back on so I went and grabbed a chair and talked to Creator for a while. When everyone started to wake up I went back over there and saw if anyone needed help and we kind of breezed through putting everything out and Monet made a hot...

 Today we had to drop off Juan, one of our mentors on this trip which was very sad because he was genuinely cool but we did pick up a new mentor Salvador. We went to Starbucks in Pasco but Juan and the guys had to go before us, so me, Lovey, Leah, and Phabian stayed behind and packed our stuff but also all the communal chairs and the breakfast stuff, which seemed kind of easy but then we had to pack stuff onto the truck and play a little Tetris. It felt like a long day but to be fair I kind of chugged the coffee that was left in the French press because obviously I couldn't let it go to waste so I was wired for a really long ride to Pasco, but we did play some jams so it wasn't to bad and I did keep Monet awake the whole way over. We went to Starbucks to update our data and to post blogs so I'm mostly caught up besides some blank spaces in my data, but the day went on without it. We drove all the way to Toppenish to fill up on gas before we took off towards Glenwood, we had...

 We woke up at the same time 6am, we ate breakfast and put everything away. We went to the Tamastslikt Cultural Institute which is the museum next to Wildhorse Casino, we walked around and had time to really sit and listen to the stories that are told at different parts of different exhibits. Some of the stories were a little surprising, I never really heard stories about the boarding school Chemawa even though my aunt went there not as a original boarding school but later on as the non threatening boarding school. The things they all had to go through is unimaginable, then there was the different coyote stories and boards that told different versions of stories I've heard before but they had visuals that were hieroglyphs used for coyotes, birds, bears, cougars, and the variety of animals that have stories told about them. It was a whole new experience to listen to these people tell stories of their grandparents and family members that were apart of the boarding schools. Those who ...

 Today we woke up at almost the same time, we all got ready and ate breakfast and made lunches. At first we were all kind of just sitting and waiting until 8:15am, but then time rolled around and we headed out to the CTUIR Hatchery to tour with Emily Emeske and while we walked around we got to see the it wasn't to similar to other hatchery's especially because they house three employees right next to the site and they have the control panel inside their homes to keep an eye on them while they are at home relaxing. This site was recently updated and they just got done with it in 2021, they're working to restore the natural habitat for these Umatilla and Walla Walla Chinook salmon. We learned that they release about 30,000 fish into the river next to the hatchery and a good portion next to Walla Walla, they hold 50,000 fish in these runway tanks and they actually get so big compared to half of the fish I catch in the Columbia sometimes. We went to where they do the spawning a...

 Today we left Spokane, it was a really long process because we still had to do some things for our soil samples which felt like it took forever and when we would think we were done we weren't and somehow had like one more thing to do. We woke up and had breakfast and made lunches then we all had our tents packed at about the same time, me and Lovey had to struggle deflating our bed pads but we got it done and had breakfast. It felt like everything before the soil sample stuff took longer than the soil sampling did. After putting everything away and getting ready to finish our soil tests, we got everything we needed ad did our canopy cover to jot down for our papers we had for the soil sampling. We got the canopy cover things done with the densitometer then we came back to start some of our spreadsheets with our data we got from doing the soil kits to test for nitrates and nitrites, phosphates, potassium, and pH. Meanwhile, Monet was in the RV and this prairie dog got into it and s...

 Today we woke up at 6am, as per usual, we had cereal and made lunches then packed up and kind of just waited around until 8:30 for Casey, Brian, and Jordan to get there to take us out to measure this stream and see how much sediment build up there was. Sometimes the stream floods and takes down the breaks that they put up to help bring up the water levels. There were 32 breaks all the way down about a mile, and they have these metal plates with a reference point in case one or a few breaks flood and move. We used this tool to measure the different points at the breaks, it is called a transit and you place it in one spot and use that one spot to measure the long yard stick. We rotated and some of us put on waders but the others used the transit and one person would be a scribe, we wrote down the measurements as they said them from the transit but there had to be more than one so we could compare measurements to make sure we all heard them right. Meanwhile Brian would tell us a stor...

 Today we went to the fish hatchery here in Wellpinit, Spokane. I usually don't like to be involved in things that have to do with teaching children, but more often than not I find myself in those situations and I tend to have a lot of fun. I also do really well teaching children and finding ways to help them understand or just help them have fun, I think that's something I get from both my parents. We started the day at 6am, which I indeed woke up early for because I knew Professor Black was on a tight schedule with us, and I think I can say that things went smoothly. I wake up everyday and thank Creator for a new opportunity to learn something and to maybe even teach someone else something, which is usually my friends but this time it was children (sort of the same thing to me). Being someone who fishes a lot on the Columbia River or N'chywana I already knew the salmon life cycle but it's not something I often find myself talking about, but with the children today I g...

 6/14/26 Today is technically our first day, I am very excited about the trip but nervous because these aren't the people I normally go on road trips with. I think it's always good to put yourself out of your comfort zone, it opens so many new experiences. I spent maybe a week telling whoever would listen that I am going on a trip with my college to learn about things I wouldn't have thought of to learn myself. It's not everyday you hear about a college student being excited about a trip that isn't technically thrilling but for someone who has personally been on this trip it's safe to say I want to learn when possible. With everything going on in the government these programs and trips and opportunity won't come by to often until something is done.