On the road for Tread Lightly!

Two of Nevada Outdoor School’s own are spreading the Tread Lightly! message throughout eastern Nevada. We’re visiting third through sixth grade classes in Ely, Pioche, Panaca, and Caliente. Through these lessons students are learning the importance of leaving what they find (except trash!), ATV safety, being prepared for outdoor adventures, and invasive species.

It is important to reach out to these rural communities with Tread Lightly! because a majority of the students partake in off-highway vehicle recreation; we want them to be safe and take care of nature while recreating. This is the second year NOS has toured eastern Nevada and we aim to continue this outreach in the future.

Bringing State History to Life

Students get to go into Lovelock Cave

Nevada Outdoor School and the Bureau of Land Management brought state history to life for more than 300 fourth graders last week. This annual field trip included educational stations at Lovelock Cave and the Marzen House Museum. This experience is beneficial to fourth graders for many reasons, one of them being sparking that outdoor ethic within students.

Prior to the trip NOS instructors visited classrooms to help students explore the importance of the Leave No Trace principle – Leave What You Find. It was rewarding to hear students remind each other – and chaperones – to leave rocks and other natural treasures where they found them.

Spark your outdoor ethic by visiting your local public lands!

Tread Lightly! on the Dunes

Nevada Outdoor School congratulates nine new Tread Trainers from Northern Nevada ATV Association. On May 1 we met at the Winnemucca Sand Dunes to explore the Tread Lightly! principles, discover the role of outdoor ethics in the recreation community, and learn about the tools to conduct workshops and outreach. During the training, we put the principle Do Your Part into practice by cleaning up the camping and staging area. Time was also taken to practice responsible riding on our off-highway vehicles. Overall, it was a successful day!

Three new Tread Trainers analyze the
What Motivates You? activity

Tread Trainer Courses are great opportunities to delve into outdoor ethics while experiencing them first hand. If you are interested in attending a trainer course e-mail me at jen.stockton@nevadaoutdoorschool.org.

-Trails

Beyond the Sagebrush

Shadow on the Playa
Black Rock Desert, Nevada

Defacing Tribal Lands = Closed Areas

Recent vandalism prompted the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Council to close the area near the pyramid tufa rock and Tribal Route #5 access road as of April 15 to the general public until further notice.

Pyramid Lake is an area of cultural importance and in general a natural area. Not to sound too demeaning, but what do we do with things we find in nature? Leave them how we found them! I don’t appreciate graffiti in general, but graffiti on natural objects really irks me because we can’t just paint over it to get rid of it.

NOSers visiting Pyramid Lake

View the press release from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe for more details and photos of the vandalism.

Let’s take care of the outdoors so we can continue to enjoy our natural areas and remember to leave what you find. Unless you find litter - you can pick up litter.

Invasion of the Impact Monsters

These first two weeks of April have been a whirlwind of outdoor ethics lessons. We prepared all of Winnemucca’s fifth graders for their trout release field trip in Water Canyon by discovering the damage impact monsters can have on their favorite outdoor place and then deciding what essentials they needed to pack for their adventure. On Monday, the 11th we saw all 225 plus students again when they visited our Camp Ohno station during the event to see if they remembered the proper way to camp.

The Tread Monster revving to learn

Plus, all of Battle Mountain’s elementary school students, kindergarten through sixth grade, are now well versed in Tread Lightly! Our lessons incorporated tread monsters, trash timelines, guessing games, a beach ball, invasive species, and more. Few students had heard of Tread Lightly before our visit, but with these annual lessons, students will build upon their new-found knowledge and develop responsible outdoor ethics!

Trail Log

Trout Release Day in Water Canyon - 2010

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler Yeats