In the fall 2022 issue of Watermark:

• Cover — Summer Campers
• Nik's Notebook: Changing of the Guard
• Day Camp Photos
• Volunteer Spotlight: Ed Bellegarde
• 2022-2024 Davidson Fellow: Helen Cheng
• Recognized: Jessica Brunacini, Lee Pollock
• Which Way the Wind Blows
• Climate Ready Coast
• Crab Blood Color Guide
• Garages Get a Makeover
• Flotsam
• FY 2022 Financials
• Making Portal Permanent?

Download the Fall 2022 Watermark (18MB PDF)

Changing of the Guard

I look at their smiling faces on the pages of this newsletter, or I watch them excitedly streaming off school buses on field trip days here. I listen to them deliver, as twentysomethings, their first scientific poster presentations at a national conference, or give an impromptu lecture on the need for more activism, and I immediately feel one thing: the kids nowadays (who I’m beginning to define as “anyone younger than me” ) are incredible. They’re sharp, they’re engaged, and they’re nearly ready to take up the burden of this world we’re bequeathing them.

My wife is a teacher. I’m on a school board in Portland. We have two teenaged boys at home. I jumped into the environmental movement 15 years ago because of their arrival. Clearly, I have a bias towards working on behalf of young people. I care very deeply about their future, even though there are some days when I feel only a gnawing dread about it.

Whenever I need to feel better about where things are going, I ignore the so-called adults—in Congress, in the media, in business—and listen to the kids. They know what needs to be done, because they naturally know how to “keep it simple, silly.” It’s an honor to work at a place, and within a national system of research reserves, that understands the necessity and inevitability of change, that knows how crucial educating and preparing and assisting the next generation is, and that stewards the Earth for them until they can take up that work.

With that goal in mind, the changing of the guard, or our elected officials, doesn’t seem so dire. The children coming up are going to fix the messes we’ve handed them, especially if we do everything we can to help them.

Nik Charov
President, Laudholm Trust
Chair, Reserve Management Authority