Written by Quinn Tamo, SSI intern
“I consider myself creative before anything else.” – Madeleine Kemp, volunteer with SSI
Madeleine is a summer intern here at Sierra Streams Institute (SSI) and a valuable one at that. Her passion was mostly for art, agriculture, and science when entering community college. An interest in art is almost parallel to an interest in science, both include having to challenge your mind’s limits to think in new ways while also using the past examples and trailblazers of the mediums, much like Madeline who had to challenge her mind to adapt to being in such a niche field. Whilst Madeleine had an interest in science before starting her summer internship at SSI, the internship has really helped her grow a deeper appreciation for our local creeks. She loves learning just for the sake of it, having a very open mind while also being very willing and eager to learn new and complicated things, no matter how niche.
Photos by Madeleine Kemp including daisy with weevil and flower meadow
At SSI, Madeleine is a field crew member. This summer internship allows her to do a wide variety of things, but the most prominent task she does is creek surveys. Those include collecting data on BMI, water quality, organic matter, physical habitat, eDNA, and algae, which all help tell about the creeks’ health. Algae is her favorite part of these creek surveys because it’s such a therapeutic act. Algae collection is to test the density of algae in the creek by seeing how much of it is on the rocks at different locations along the creek. Madeleine gets to put those rocks into buckets to then scrub them clean with a hard brush to get all the algae off. Once the rock is squeaky clean, she gets to filter the water through a syringe into a filter that’ll catch all the algae that she scrubbed into the water. The most therapeutic part of doing algae is the scrubbing of the rocks with hard brushes. It’s a calming act for Madeleine and it really helps her to just take a break to scrub and admire the nature surrounding the creeks she does surveys on.
It’s such a soothing task to sit in the beautiful scenery and clean off a rock in a bucket of creek water. Madeline doesn’t only like doing algae, she also does a task called BMI (benthic macroinvertebrate) collection, or simply put; bug collecting. BMI are our natural bugs that reside in our creeks and streams and seeing all that tiny life in a container moving around like a kaleidoscope and getting to pick out twigs and other debris so it can be sent to the lab is something Madeline also finds therapeutic in a very similar way to the algae.
Photos by Madeleine Kemp from the middle of the creek and creek bank
“It’s as dangerous as life.” – Maggie Stiefvater, author of The Raven Cycle
Being out in the field only made Madeline more curious about what happens after everything is done and the algae and BMI are labeled and sent to the lab. Because after the algae is collected it’s sent to the chemistry lab to then be burned to record the ash-free dry mass of it. Madeleine loves to ask many questions and observe the process to figure everything out that she wanted to know. As for the BMI, they are sent to the BMI lab to then be meticulously sorted through to count how many BMI are in a sample. It’s only with the drive to learn, which Madeleine has, that led to her learning more about what SSI does after the creek surveys are done.
“The more you learn, the more you learn there is to learn.” – Mali Valerio, BMI lab manager at SSI
Madeline is a very compassionate person, her love for restoration and helping people shines through her work at the creeks. When asked if she would ever like to expand on her role here, she said that the fact she’s graduating soon prevents her from doing so, but she has definitely thought about it. She expressed her gratitude for the people here because of their kindness, and that the work she does and everything after it is cool. We are very lucky to have such an eager learner and hard worker here at Sierra Streams Institute.
