I started my position as a Visitor Services Specialist for the Menomonee Valley branch about four months ago. One of the best parts of my job is not only having the opportunity to use my first language, Spanish, but also to help my community connect, or in many cases reconnect, with nature and the environment. It also gave me the ability to start that re-connection that my family has with nature and with Milwaukee ecology specifically.

Warm weather has arrived, and that means it's canoe and kayak season! If you missed this blog post when it was originally published in 2015, we think you'll find it's just right for inspiring visions of sunny days out on the water. Read on, and be sure to take a look at our full list of summer paddling programs after the post!

Did you know that September is Coastal Awareness Month? Here at the Center we’re celebrating our amazing “third coast” with a number of water-based educational programs geared toward educational exploration and recreation of Milwaukee’s watersheds.

As the days get shorter and the acorn squash fatter, the rivers of our city will soon be awash in streaks of yellows, oranges, and reds. But if there’s one thing that won’t be waning (at least for me), it’s the itch to be out and active along Milwaukee’s waterways. Do you find yourself in the, ahem, same boat? Then let’s give the Milwaukee River some much deserved autumnal love with the Urban Ecology Center’s Fall Paddling Series!

Before we launch into detail about our Summer Paddling Series, a word on perspective:

“Successful education has the power to make the world strange again. Without any stake in the places where we live, we walk through days in which there are trees but no tree in particular, we drive along roads that could be anywhere, never registering the mountains to the east and lake to the west that determined, in fact, exactly where that route would run. Such casual familiarity is the opposite of intimacy and attentiveness.”

- environmental studies professor John Elder