Muddy Conversations

Going down the Mississippi River I have been able to talk to major organizations about their outreach and their own organizations. I haven’t really talked about the different organizations I’ve talked to on this blog yet because each time I talk to them no one seems to be reaching out to any type of diverse community. The biggest similarities into outreach I see is that people are reaching out to the elderly communities and the youth. There is also an outreach for the upper 20s and to mid-30s for employment but not too much on the actual engagement of them or teens. I think that this could be such a missed demographic that could really benefit from the outdoors. I also obviously noticed that no organization is making too much of an effort to engage other diverse communities into the outdoors.
    During my conversations with different organizations, I always make it a point to bring up the lack of diversity in the outdoors. This is just a way to set out my agenda about getting more of an effort on diversity outreach in the outdoors. I always want to leave people thinking of their actions in their organizations and hopefully have them do more diversity outreach. I have made a few suggestions for different organizations. In the National Mississippi Museum, I had suggested doing Spanish tours on specific days or having like a Spanish night to encourage the Latino community to come out and learn about the Mississippi River and maybe inspire some to get out on the water to explore.
    It wasn’t until I got to St. Louis when I met “Big Muddy Mike” and he was actually actively trying to engage diverse communities in his area. Mike runs an outdoors organization where he takes people out on the lower Mississippi River in tandem canoes. He does some cash catching tours of moonlight canoes with a chef and doing an over the fire meal for wealthier people in the are. He puts all that money back into the company to keep costs low for his more lower-income customers or even free. He does a lot of outreach for youth in his area which is a majority black community. Mike wants people in the south to have a better connection with the river and for there to be less of a stigma around the river. His goal is to have every child in the surrounding area to have jumped in the river before he dies.

Muddy Adventures: https://www.2muddy.com/

Quick Update: FLOODING

We are heading to the Quad Cities and have decided to get shuttled down to St. Louis. The reason for this is because flooding has gotten so bad that we can not longer paddle until the water has passed. Lock and dam #20 is completely underwater and all other locks and dams are closed so we really cannot move. We had the decision to stay in the Quad Cities  for a long period of time or go down to St. Louis and wait out some time too. We decided that for us to get a full experience on the river we would shuttle part of the river to St. Louis.
We will be living in someones front yard with tents set up.
Some of the factors to shuttling was that there are more learning opportunities with museums and local political organizations that we could get into contact with. We also took in diversity in the city, there are a lot more people of color in the south and it has been awhile since we have seen diversity a long the river. We also looked at the weather and if we stayed in the Quad Cities we would be sleeping in snow. St. Louis is going to be about 10 degrees warmer.
Though it is upsetting to set down the paddles I think this is also a good thing because most of us have not been able to do much school work. We have hefty amounts of reading, papers, and lectures to catch up on. I think so far my biggest critique of the program is balancing school with the expedition and integrating the two for the full "experiential learning".

Maiden Rock

*Late post on Maiden Rock*
After a long paddle, we landed ourselves in the very memorable Maiden Rock Wisconsin. There we were greeted by a very sunburnt man wearing a speedo of the American flag and he slightly resembled Hulk Hogan with a bear in one hand and a cigarette in the other. We had no idea we had just landed in one of the biggest hot spots of a famous motorcycle trail. There was hundreds of motorcyclist all around this very small town. They were mostly at the bar or around the campsite that was mostly filled with RVs or more motorcyclists.
When we landed we stuck out like a sore thumb because we were 19 people getting out of these very big canoes setting up the only tents in the area. Soon we became to feel a bit uneasy and a need to protect each other from all these motorcyclists. We thought that we would use the buddy system since most of us were feeling pretty uneasy about being in this town with all the motorcyclists.
In town, we ran into a second hand/ vintage shop that had many problematic products. There was a book that talked about why being gay was sinful and should not be allowed. That same book also talked about how transgender was not real and went on to insult the trans community. It was awful and hurtful to see because there are some people in our group that are part of the LGBT community.
Maiden Rock was just not too welcoming to our small diverse community that was paddling the Mississippi River. We just didn’t feel good being there and were ready to leave the moment we got there.

Some people went to do some stream sampling and at the stream, they were run off the property. Apparently, the stream was private property and the owners called the police on the students.

Class in Food

From Winona, we headed back to Minneapolis for the peace prize forum! Before we could actually get home we stopped in Faribault and Northfield to visit farms that were very different from each other. First, we went to Faribault to visit the Living Green Farm where they practice aeroponic, which is where they grow plants in an air/ mist environment without using any soil. The lettuce grows 12 months a year, more than outdoor agriculture can do. They sell to bigger box stores, co-ops, Lunds and Byerlys, and Wal-Mart. Better for the large corporations, as they were consistent, available, and dependent whereas normal agriculture is not.
From Faribault, we headed to Northfield to visit Mainstreet Farm project. There they have a poultry farm with chickens that is mostly open fields that walk around the farm that has corn, trees, bushes, and other vegetation. The vegetation of the farm becomes very complex and the environment is not really controlled. The idea of the Main street project brings about this 4D model of looking further into the soil and not just what is being given on the external.
There was a lot of talk between me and my peers of how class selects your food in the food system. People with lower income would probably have to buy the mass-produced greens from Living Greens Farm where lacks the soil that provides a lot of the nutrients for the plants and we, the consumer,  would not get those expected nutrients from the plants. It is made year round and with a minimal amount of care for the plants, they are able to sell a massive amount of the product to big companies.  The Mainstreet Farm project is a small farm that sells to its local co-op. The Mainstreet Farm makes a diverse variety of the crops that are all organic. With such a high demand of care for such a small amount of crop, the prices for these products are higher than those would be at Living Greens Farm.

Living Greens Farm: http://www.livinggreensfarm.com/
Mainstreet Projects: https://mainstreetproject.org/