NUCFAC PLT Greenschools! Spring Break YLINC 2014 Day 5 and 6

Friday was the last day the students would spend camping, and it easily could have been their best night.

We returned to Stephen F. Austin State University to the beautiful Pineywoods Native Plant Center, which maintains the historic Tucker House and the resplendent Tucker Woods park. The Tucker Woods is a bottomland hardwood environment with paved trails snaking throughout and lies adjacent to LaNana Creek in Nacogdoches, Texas, providing a natural escape and outdoor laboratory for SFASU faculty, staff and students.

NUCFAC PLT Greenschools Spring Break Y-LINC 2014 - Day Four

Della Barbato, FNFGT's Greenschools! coordinator, had a friend at the University Center at SFASU

The Y-LINC students spent the entire day at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, touring the university with very generous teachers and university staff explaining what SFASU can offer them.

Piero Fenci opens up the kiln for the Y-LINC campers.

Professor Piero Fenci, a master ceramist in his 80th semester of teaching, presented SFASU’s dream like ceramic studio. There were dozens of throwing wheels, pallets of raw clay, kilns full of projects, and all the materials needed to make a custom glaze. The students got to make their own little sculptures, and the ceramics teacher agreed to have them fired and sent to the students later down the line. Austin High art teacher David De Hoyos was especially impressed with the facilities.

NUCFAC PLT Greenschools! Y-LINC Spring Break 2014 - Day Three

Last night was our last night at Stubblefield Lake Recreation Area, so this morning our young leaders packed up their tents and picked up all the detritus of two nights spent under the stars before heading off to their first destination, the East Texas Plant Materials Center in the Stephen F. Austin Experimental Forest.

The Natural Resource Conservation Service maintains several Plant Materials Centers throughout the country, for the purposes of developing new solutions to conservation problems with native plants, according to Assistant Manager Melinda Brakie. She said that the ETPMC can take a handful of seeds harvested from the wild and develop a new release of a native plant that can resist drought or invasion by non-native plants. Plant Materials Centers like ETPMC release these new strains to commercial seed developers and non-profit groups, helping to improve agricultural yields, restore native prairies and much more.

Melinda showed us the ETPMC's interesting method of treating their wastewater: specially engineered beds of water-loving plants that soak up effluent and clean the water again, without a single moving part or artificial chemical. She also gave us a tour of the seed lab, where seeds are analyzed and germinated, as well as their seed sorting machine that uses air a specialized sieves to separate the seed for the chaff. The PLT Greenschools! certified students got to see the planted that they had planted in the Winter Break Y-LINC trip earlier this year, thus creating a photo-op for SFA High mascot Stevie.

Stephen F. Austin High School mascot Stevie with a tray of plants that the YLINC
campers planted in the Winter Break Y-LINC earlier this year. They have
obviously been in the good hands of the ETPMC staff!

We then traveled to Stephen F. Austin Sate University, where one of our long-time Amigos del Bosque partner Andre Saenz is currently in his introductory courses at the Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture (ATCOFA). He is pursuing a degree in Wildlife Management, and we are very proud of him. 

NUCFAC PLT Greenschools! Y-LINC Spring Break 2014: Day Two

On the Little Lake Creek trail at Little Lake Creek Wilderness.

Little Lake Creek Wilderness features the increasingly rarefied gem of southern eastern U.S. forests: the bottomland hard woods.

Fungi devour snags and fallen logs largely undisturbed in the Wilderness, thanks in part to regulations that exclude motorized vehicles and permanent structures. However, considerate forest users are the most effective protection against disturbance.

Our kids enjoyed a four hour hike through Little Lake Creek Wilderness in the Sam Houston National Forest. It was the perfect way to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act, which has been protecting special places from development since 1964.

NUCFAC PLT Greenschools! Y-LINC Spring Break 2014: Day one

Luis Cruz, Emerson Hernandez and Nestor Vazquez pitch their tent by the calm waters of Lake Stubblefield.

Our kids arrived safe and sound at Stubblefield Lake Recreation Area in the Sam Houston National Forest, to kick off our journey into nature. They pitched their tents fairly quickly for frist time campers, working together to figure out which pole went where. Tomorrow we will be boldly going into the Little Lake Creek Wilderness to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act and learn more about how the National Wilderness Preservation System secures access to true natural solitude for all Americans.