Education brings us all a gateway

What an opportunity. We live in a community where our homes, businesses and schools are only minutes away from a portal to the natural world. For Wenatchee’s fifth-graders, it happens every year. Just a quick trip from their everyday classroom and they are in the greatest classroom of all, a world begging to be explored.

The Shrub-Steppe’n Up Saddle Rock program takes 700 students into the foothills above their home for a hand’s on experience in botany, entomology, zoology, geology, ecology — face to face with the natural sciences. There could be no better place to spark curiosity in young minds. It’s the kind of experience that change a life.

This program, a partnership between the Wenatchee School District and Chelan-Douglas Land Trust, is now approaching its 15th year. It’s success has been inspirational, and a revelation. The Land Trust, steward of Saddle Rock, and the city of Wenatchee, owner of Saddle Rock, propose to build on five acres at the end of Circle Street a “gateway.”

To read more, check out the Wenatchee World article.