Camping, bird banding, social entrepreneurship, and storms, oh my!

The first day of the summer experience for the veteran River Fellows was a full one! We spent the morning with an introduction to the co-starters generator, an entrepreneurship model that will be used to help students work through their river action ideas together in a supportive way. The idea is to rapidly uncover flaws in the fellows’ concepts and to quickly find better concepts, which they will then articulate and implement.

transitioning from classroom to trail 

A dry start 

After a morning of identifying passions and generating ideas, we hit the trail for a campout at the Tennessee River Gorge Trust (TNRGT) bird-banding lab. John Diener greeted us with a smile and gave us a glimpse into the globetrotting career of a bird-bander.

 on the way to winning the tent set-up competiton 

After a tent-setting-up competition and some elaborate hammock hanging, we went out to help John set up the bird capture nets.  Unfortunately, the weather threatened to take a turn for the worse and the nets and hammocks had to be taken back down. 

unset bird capture net (almost invisible once set) 

Setting a capture net

We returned to our co-starters work and identified leadership styles and obstacles to implementing the river action ideas. The storms held off until after we had eaten the wonderful chili dinner prepared by Sunshine from Outdoor Chattanooga.  

TNRGT bird banding lab 

We were able to get a preview of the inside of the bird banding lab while we waited out storm #1 of the evening. While we were hoping for relaxing nature sounds to help us sleep, we instead slept lightly as we were ‘serenaded’ by barred owls, barge horns, intense thunder, lightning and rain. It was quite a night for those new to camping.