The event for Corvallis/Albany offers a seat in a canoe and can be arranged at: willametteriverkeeper.org
The City Of Albany website also has details and links for the boat rides that float from Corvallis down to Bryant Park in Albany. The event organizers are also encouraging anyone who has a boat and wants to, can join in the clean-up effort. There is also a shirt give-away at the picnic afterwards at the park.
The link above is the non-profit Willamette River Keeper, whose sole mission is to "protect and restore" the river. I encourage an in depth look at their website. As well as
SOLV:http://www.solv.org/ and Focus The Nation: http://focusthenation.org/ , both Oregon non-profit super enironmental aware-ists.
I fish our pure and pristine mountain rivers for salmon and steelhead, sturgeon and shad, and others. My core is respect. Back when I smoked tobacco(how stupid!), I never threw my filters on the ground. I cannot count the times another fisherman said "Hey, good idea.", when I put the butt in a ziplock bag. I had, and still have, 3 half-gallon ziplocks in my fishin' pack. One for toilet paper. Stop laughing, one for my phone, camera, and fishing tag- they HAVE to stay dry. And one for the cigarette filters. It holds dog treats these days.
I study the habits of the water. The Hydrology, the science of water flow. The floodwaters and back-eddies are remarkable in the sense that they transport and deposit gear that I use. I hunt these waters for floats mostly, for obvious reasons- they are bright and hardly damaged. But I see mostly litter.Waters rise picking up debris and moving it downstream in a repeated sort of garbage pickup without the diesel and noise. The cycle starts in the headwater streams high in our conifer mountains, picks up steam and rumbles through communities and farmlands, connecting with other rivers,twisting its way, until it enters the Pacific Ocean. There, the plastic gets churned around like laundry in the sea currents, breaking down into food-like particles. The plastic that does not break down floats at the surface, teaming with six-pack containers and grocery bags to strangle wildlife. This cycle is constant and repeated. To help break the cycle, one can volunteer at events like The Great Willamette River Clean-Up or voluntarily be active in everyday life- and bring a garbage sack along your next outing. The help is everlasting...
Some are somewhat sick at the thought of picking up trash, and yeah, it sucks. Bring rubber gloves and leather work gloves and some even bring a "poker", a tool to stab garbage and deposit it away. And if you are floating the river Saturday Oct. 6, bring a lunch and water as well.
River conscience, or critical thought, or whatever it may be- the last place our trash should be is in the waters of our Earth. When we co-inhabit those waters for swimming, fishing, rock-hounding, hunting, cutting wood, camping...stop me when we are not on the river, when we are on the river we should be active in both not littering, and picking up litter. Do you ever ride the bike path and trails along the Willamette in Albany? Exactly. Get involved and volunteer for the clean-up effort. Take a garbage bag the next time you hike the Takena landing Trail(4 miles of heaven...). Help keep Oregon streams and waters free of the trash that some idiot will deposit there without thought. Keep Oregon Green. Just Do It. <Can I be sued?
My dogs, Moose and Elka on the beautiful upper Siletz River, Oregon.
The Willamette River at Albany.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVEd7UlX11Y
Go help the Willamette River sustain herself and her banks. Have a great day y'all! RLB
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