#RAH2050, Aug, 20, 2019

My name is Emma I work for Ducks Unlimited Canada here in Halifax and my watermark is about a visit I did to Belcher's Marsh which is in Clayton Park. It's a lovely freshwater wetland surrounded by lots of apartment buildings and houses and I've been there many times and every time I go I always have a unique interaction with someone on the trail so one of my most memorable visits was in June and we were doing a nearby event and I had to collect some little invertebrate critters to show the people that were coming to this event so little pond critters little dragonfly nymphs cats fine imps things like that whatever I could find so I had a limited time frame and I had a tiny little net about this big and a little bucket and I was down at the marsh frantically trying to just find anything in the water and I was getting stressed out and sweaty and not being successful and then this little boy comes up with a Tupperware full of fish and a huge net taller than him and he said what are you what are you doing I'm trying to catch something I'm trying to catch fish anything said well you're not doing a very good job it's like I know thank you and you said well listen I've been at this for five years I'm quite good at it and quite good at catching fish and anything in the water so if you want you can have some of my fish so he poured some of his fish into my bucket and together we looked for dragonfly nymphs and water beetles in the marsh and he found some things that he hadn't seen before that were pretty neat but just the overall experience was it was just wonderful and he was in grade four so this young man was only nine years old but he'd already been added since he was four or five years old I guess collecting things in the marsh and it was just a very inspiring reminder to just slow down and look for inspiration and the people and the kids especially around you because they usually know what's up you know they know how to have fun if they're given the space to do so and it reminded me why it's so important to protect these wetland spaces in our urban centers so that people like that kids like that can just go down at his front door walk a couple minutes and be at a beautiful wetland and collect fish for his first bucket!