Along the continental divide…

For four years in the mid-1990s, working as the hydrologist for the Shoshone National Forest in northwest Wyoming, I hired a four-person summer seasonal crew to inventory thousands of miles of roads for effects on water quality.

I typically hired watershed science students from western U.S. natural resource colleges. Not only did this provide these students practical field experience, it also provided me some assurance the data they collected had merit.

One of those four years though, I hired an electrical engineering student from Baton Rouge, Louisiana through a federal hiring program encouraging employment of students from predominately black colleges and universities.

Via a bus from Baton Rouge…

I met this student very early on a Sunday morning at the bus stop in Shoshoni, Wyoming. We then drove to the Horse Creek work center on the Wind River Ranger District north of Dubois.

The work center served as home-away-from-home for this student and his three fellow crew members. Fairly remote, certainly by Baton Rouge standards, the work center consisted of a small two-room cabin, an outhouse, and a couple of wooden platforms draped by canvas wall tents.

During the drive to Horse Creek I asked my new hire if he had a good flight, thinking he flew to Casper, Wyoming from Baton Rouge and then rode the bus to Shoshoni. He promptly informed me he, for the past three days, had been sitting on the bus. Wow I thought! That is a long bus ride.

He also informed me this was his first trip beyond the city limits of Baton Rouge. Interesting I thought.

A few hours later we arrived at Horse Creek work center. I pulled our Forest Service truck in front of one of the wall tents to unload the gentleman’s gear. His first response was “So that’s a wall tent huh?”

“It is!” I responded, thinking back to the days I stayed at work centers while a Forest Service summer seasonal hire.

I proceeded to show him around the work center, which didn’t take long.

Pondering a babbling brook…

One day later that summer, while my crew and I were observing a two-track road crossing one of the many streams on the ranger district I asked my Baton Rouge hire if he realized that the water flowing by him that day will also flow by him after he returns to school at the end of the summer.

Struggling to grasp what I was saying, I proceeded to explain that water in this stream flows into the Wind River, which flows into the Bighorn River, then the Yellowstone River, the Missouri River, and finally, the mighty Mississippi River, on its long journey to the Gulf of Mexico.

Pondering what a babbling brook in Wyoming has to do with Baton Rouge…

Which brings me to the title of this blog – Why should Baton Rouge give a hoot about Wyoming water towers?

The answer is simple. That small stream along the Continental Divide in Wyoming and the great city of Baton Rouge are linked through the water cycle – that never ending rotation of good ole’ H₂O that makes our planet – the Blue Marble – habitable.

Folks – we’re all in this together. How we manage our watersheds affects everyone else who lives in, or visits, the watershed, even those that live thousands of miles downstream or in some other part of the world.

So the next time you are in a Wyoming water tower, whether for fun or profit, think about that.

Or if you ever venture to Baton Rouge to partake in big city night life, and stand on the bank of the Mississippi, think about that.

Until the next time, cheers!

   Send article as PDF