By Janine Gates

It’s been a full year since Saving the Nisqually Delta was published! I have met so many dedicated, fascinating, and humble people on this journey! This week was no different as I took a City of DuPont sponsored moonwalk of the Sequalitchew Creek trail on Thursday evening.

As the small group was led by Renee Buck, chair of the Chambers-Clover Creek Watershed Council, we walked and talked, watched the sunset over the Nisqually Reach, then walked back in the dark, listening for owls and other creatures. We arrived at the 1843 Fort Nisqually site and watched the lunar eclipse under the silhouette of the site’s historic black locust trees.

Buck, a retired lieutenant colonel, came to Fort Lewis in 1980. Specializing in logistics, she served in Baghdad, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. She initiated the first moonwalk in 2014 as her capstone project to satisfy her Master of Arts in leadership and change from Antioch College in Seattle.

Buck said she was compelled to begin the moonwalk as a way to engage and invite people to experience Sequalitchew Creek, even if they weren’t environmentally minded. That year, 96 people participated. “It was a supermoon that year. We had telescopes set up and had people here from nine months old into their 90s! It’s such a pretty place. I needed something to connect people to place, and this place has a long, long, long history.”

The camaraderie of the evening was as special as the lunar eclipse.

Pictures: Sequalitchew Creek trail, narrow gauge rails, Nisqually Reach, Renee Buck and Luke Skywalker, lunar eclipse over the prairie.