Mahalo to the team at He’eia for welcoming us to their Reserve for the 2026 NERRS/NERRA Fall meeting.

A week of fellowship, learning, and fun affirmed the vital connections that bind NERRds together; it also left many of us feeling that our next national gathering at He’eia in 2026 is a long way away. Over the next two years, when we feel the need to connect with our fellow NERRds, we’ll reflect on a guided imagery writing adapted from Water Wings (Project Wild Aquatic) by Tess Vennard and Kelle Loughlin and read aloud at the close of our national meeting. This powerful poem is a lovely reminder of what binds us together, even when we are miles apart. We may be dispersed, but we are connected through the waters we love and protect.

Water Wings

Sit comfortably and close your eyes, take a deep breath, and try to imagine the things you will hear me describing …

You are sitting on the edge of a beach, soft sand buffering the gentle waves lapping at the shoreline. Your bare feet are swaying in the clean, clear water. It feels cool, but is grounding as the currents pull, flowing out to the open ocean, to the Gulf of Maine … It is here that you will stretch your mind and realize that this water connects you with all of the world’s oceans. Feel its more powerful flow … You touch a single body of water that wraps around the entire world. Your own body contains water that is part of this system.

Your touch is now draining into the Webhannet Estuary in Wells, Maine, swirling through beds of eelgrass and flowing through schools of hungry mummichogs. Through the Piscataqua River in New Hampshire, your touch glides over a glistening mudflat and lingers in tiny salty pools. It leaps through the Quashnet River and rustles up a cranberry bog. It slowly creeps across the Lord Cove floodplain forest and rains upon the deep blue waters of Narragansett Bay.

Washing through the gills of a monstrous striped bass, your reach ripples through Long Island Sound. You can feel the ridges as you roll down the trunk of a pitch pine, flowing into the Mullica River Watershed. From there, you flow in a cloud to Wisconsin Point and watch as you pass through banks of a freshwater marsh and settle around a catfish’s whiskers. All around you, the iridescent scales of bluegills reflect brilliantly in the Old Woman Creek estuary.

In Blackbird Creek, Delaware, your touch flows freely through drops of water dripping from your kayak paddle. During high tides, you guide hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs to the shores of Chesapeake Bay, their eggs beckoning birds traversing the Atlantic Flyway. In Kitty Hawk Woods, your touch slides off the slippery back of a salamander.

You watch the turquoise waves crash as you carry Winyah Bay Sea Turtles to shore. You can hear a sharp cry as a Sapelo Island Osprey dives, and emerges with a flounder tight in its grasp. Pale pink Roseate Spoonbills shuffle their feet along shallow banks in the Guana River, and a Rookery Bay Florida Panther prowls in a mangrove estuary. In Jobos Bay, Puerto Rico, Brown Pelicans churn up the silty bottom and jab at fish scurrying by.

Furious winds blow you into Apalachicola Bay where you hear the melodic sounds of Jeff Dutrow’s harmonica echoing off the gentle waves. Crimson and green pitcher plants drink from the stormy skies, covering the ground like a field of mini soldiers. In the deeper waters of Grand Bay, Mississippi, Manatees rest in a seagrass bed and float idly along the currents pushed by your touch. Along the edge of Aransas Bay, a whooping crane casts a shadow on the sparkling brackish water swirling in and out with the tides.

You watch a California Coyote navigate Smuggler’s Gulch, shrouded in a misty haze. Your reach extends beyond a Southern Sea Otter, plunging to the bottom of Elkhorn Slough where sticky spindly Sea Urchins rest. Listen as a Ruddy Duck calls out, the sound skipping across First Mallard Beach like a well-worn stone. Look as an enormous elk emerges at the edge of South Slough, Oregon, grazing on sedges and grasses. Your touch is flying now, cascading off the feathered shoulders of a Peregrine Falcon dipping down towards Padilla Bay.

Along the icy shores of Kachemak Bay, Alaska brown bears traverse chilly creeks and feast on a buffet of spawning salmon. And finally, your touch pushes the tenacious oh ooo poo on their arduous journey upstream through the clear clean waterfalls of He’eia.

You can feel the thrum now; waves crash and millions of shades of brilliant blues collide with you. Your watery embrace has reached all corners of the country, and is still cycling around the world. Trace back the places we’ve visited, coast to coast, return from the rivers, oceans, and streams to feeling the cool clear water on the surfaces of your feet. When you feel you are ready, you may open your eyes.

Want more Reserve stories delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to our newsletter.