Everything comes back to the water

Adjacent to Downriver Golf Course, on 2.3 acres of land along the Spokane River, sports enthusiasts have created a course for disc golf, a game where discs are pitched into baskets. The area also boasts walking trails and wild vegetation. The site was saved from condo development in 1996 when conservation futures tax money, paid for by Spokane County landowners, was used to purchase the river land and preserve it as community green space.

Editorial board member Rebecca Nappi recently talked with Mary Kunkel there. A 57-year-old massage therapist, Kunkel has started a women’s river group to get citizens involved in everyday efforts to keep the river healthy and accessible to all.

Rebecca Nappi: Describe the first time you saw the Spokane River and your reaction to it.

Mary Kunkel: The first time I saw the Spokane River was right before we moved here in 1988. We had come here from the East Coast and I was just blown away that there was something of this beauty that ran right through the city of Spokane. I couldn’t believe it. We had come from an area that was just nothing like this. And then to see this gorgeous river running through town. It was in the fall and there wasn’t a lot of water running through it. We followed it out (from downtown) into the Spokane Valley and I couldn’t believe it. It just took my breath away.

Q: How did it contrast with your experience in the East?

A: We lived in several different states. I’ve been here since 1988, but we’ve lived many places. We came here from Atlanta, and before that, we’d lived in Texas and North Carolina and I don’t think that that part of the country values its resources as much as we do. I felt that. When I came here, the river looked clean and cared for and I was extremely impressed.

Q: Elaborate on the line: It looked cared for.

A: There wasn’t a lot of trash. I fell in love, originally, with the Columbia River. I got obsessed with the Columbia River to the point where my children would bring people home and say, “Please just don’t mention the Channeled Scablands.” They knew that would start me off. But then I got more local in my thoughts, because everything starts right here with the Spokane River. I didn’t see trash. I felt like there were better filters on the system to keep the river cleaner than the places I came from in the East. I know it’s not perfect, but compared to what I was used to it seemed more valued.

Q: How do you interact with the river now?

A: Mostly what I do is walk on the river. My favorite place is Riverside State Park, because it’s so close. I just can’t believe that within 10 minutes of downtown Spokane we have this wonderful resource. Or I cycle on the Centennial Trail. I don’t kayak in this river. I do kayak, but I have a healthy respect for this river and I haven’t done any water things in this river myself. I’m a little afraid of it. Every year, I read about accidents and I’m not experienced at kayaking. I’ve done it in places where the water is much calmer. And so I have a healthy respect for the river. I don’t fool around with it. In the spring when the water is high, I’m careful.

Q: Tell us how your river group came to be.

A: I spent a long time just thinking about the river and I kept running into other women — some younger, some older — who cared passionately about the river and about the resources. People kept talking about how they were worried about the river and worried about the environmental impact. It starts and stops at the river. I kept running into people who felt the same and were worried about the direction we were going.

It was serendipitous. It fell into place. I said, “Let’s get together.” So we started last August or September. We met for the first time and decided the river would be our focus.

Q: How did you find the women? Who are they?

A: They are a variety of women. They are women I met through my work or the women I knew through my work knew someone else. It was pure and simple networking.

Q: How many are there of you?

A: We started out with only 6. Sometimes we’re 12 or 15 and we hope to keep growing. We’re not even a year old yet.

Q: Do you have an official name?

A: Actually, we are the River Sisters. One of group members, Molly, came up with this and everyone loved it. It’s not been officially voted on.

Q: How often do you meet?

A: We meet once a month.

Q: And what do you discuss at your meetings?

A: We discuss a variety of things. We have had people come in and speak to us about the aquifer. People have been so gracious. They speak and then let us ask questions. We’ve had someone come in and talk to us about simplifying our lives, all of us, and cutting down on our usage of nonrenewable things, because everything goes back to the river, everything affects it.

Q: Love your line “everything goes back to the river.” Do a little riff on that for us.

A: I wish I could rap. I would do a little rap. Again, I’m obsessive about the Bretz floods and the Glacial Lake Missoula and the Channeled Scablands. From the earliest times, everything so far back comes back to the water that flows into our lives, the water that is in our bodies. Everything comes back to water and in Spokane, for us, that water is the river and the aquifer.

Q: Give us a “Channeled Scablands for Dummies.”

A: Thousands of years ago, there was a huge lack, Glacial Lake Missoula, over by Missoula and there was a big ice dam that held all the water back and it held more water than all the Great Lakes combined. And this dam burst and all the water came rushing through this area, and it was this water that rushed through and carved our rivers. This happened many times over thousands of years. It would build up and then would break. That’s why west of town we have all those basalt formations. It all came from the water. I’ve heard it likened to someone taking a huge bucket of water and dumping it on a sandbox. I believe (archeologist JHarlen) Bretz was the one who first hypothesized about it and everyone laughed at him back in the ‘30s. But then it came to be so.

Q: What is your hope for your River Sisters group?

A: I hope we grow very large. I hope we attract lots of members. Almost every month, I have someone call who has heard of it and say, I’d like to join and how do I come? Somebody called me who is building a greenhouse and she wanted to talk to us about that. I hope we grow and grow. I envision eventually carrying signs to Washington D.C.

Q: So this year was a knowledge building year. Daydream about some actions you’d see the River Sisters taking. Dream big.

A: Maybe Washington D.C. is not a good dream, because we’ve tried really hard to think globally, act locally. So maybe we would do better to get literature out statewide. This new ban on phosphates is wonderful. We’ve talked about reaching the young moms in the community, because that’s where a lot of things start. Women are where it’s at for getting things done.

That’s one of the things we’ve talked about is distributing literature this fall at day care centers and to the schools so that mothers with children can start thinking about their children’s future and the river.

Q: What would you put in that literature?

A: That it makes a difference if you recycle. It makes a difference if you reuse things. It makes a difference if you carpool, if you ride the bus. We think we can’t make a difference, but we can. One of the biggest issues is complacency. People think they can’t do anything. So people don’t. And that was one of the reasons why I started this group. I want us to feel like we can do something. One of my heroes is Pete Sieger and what he did with the Hudson River. I can’t play a banjo and sing, but I bet I could find someone who plays a banjo and sings. Our meeting place is out of commission for remodeling. So we’re a little bit in limbo this month and next. But I’m hoping in the fall, we’ll be back full bore.

Q: Where do you meet?

A: We meet at the North Spokane Library, the second Saturday of every month.

Q: What other visions?

A: I wish I had everybody here. I think there are people in the group who might have more visions even than I have. We have one member who thinks about goals and missions. I’d like to have an awareness that I don’t think that is there. Having moved here from the East Coast, I think people here so take the river for granted. More than anything, I’d like an awareness that if we don’t take care of it, it will go away.

Q: What do you want people to know?

A: Good things do come to an end. It could become so polluted that we won’t be able to use it the way that we do. It’s really precious. People who have lived here their whole lives have no idea what a treasure it is to have this river.

Q: What is the biggest threat?

A: The biggest threat is probably complacency, because it’s here and it’s always been here. It will probably continue to be here, but maybe not in the form that we know it.

Q: The land we’re on right now used to have a nursing home on it. Then Dr. Hrair Garabedian, a Spokane cardiologist, bought it and rather than sell it to a developer, he sold it for use as parkland. Describe what you think this land would look like now if it had been developed into condos.

Q: They’d probably be lovely condos and there’d be a lot of nice people living here, but I think it would have lots of signs posted that say “Private, no trespassing” or “Trails for members only.” In the distance now we can see people walking with dogs and there are people playing disc golf and none of that would be here. It would be a gated community that would serve very nicely the people that lived there, but the people like me, that don’t have enough money to buy a condo here, we would be closed out. There would be no access. This is a wonderful use of this land. It would be a shame.

Q: Why?

A: I think the more common good we can get from a piece of property, the better. I would so much like for everybody to use all aspects of the river and not limit it to just the people who have enough money to live in a certain place. I think it should be open and free for everyone. I love it that they took away the parking fee for the state parks. Our group met here and it was wonderful, because some of the people didn’t know it. It was lovely. We met by the river.

Q: In the East, did you see a lot of what you described as people living along rivers in gated communities with private trails?

A: There was a lot of that. And 30 years ago, we lived in Eastern Kentucky and there the rivers were not taken care of at all. There were mine tailings that went into the river. Washing machines went into the river. Everything. The river was a dumping ground for everything. I haven’t been back there in awhile. I’d assume it has changed now. I hope there is an awareness.

In the wealthier parts of the South, the rivers were exclusive. There were areas far from the cities that you could hire a rafting group and go rafting or camp in a state park. As far as in the cities themselves, there was nothing like this — that I saw. Maybe it existed, but I didn’t see it.

Q: We’re sitting across the river from the Centennial Trail. And that was a project activated by citizens, most notably a man named Denny Ashlock who has since died. It was a citizen initiative with a buy-in from government and some companies. What do you think of the trail?

A: I love the trail. When we moved here, it was started, but it wasn’t finished. If I were visiting Spokane from out of town, I would be so impressed with the trail. I’ve seen other cities with trails but I think this is the best there is that I’ve seen. You can get on it right downtown and go all the way to state line if you choose. You can pass through areas that are wild and areas that are right in town. I know someone who lives on the trail and she goes out her back door and gets on the trail in rollerblades. It is accessible for everyone. I love it.

Q: You help bodies heal for a living. What analogy can you make between human bodies and river bodies?

A: I do massage therapy for a living. I had to do a presentation to a group of massage therapists where we were talking about releases in the body of energies and muscles. I stood up and did a thing about the Columbia River and how the dams were put in and stopped energy, stopped the water from flowing.

In a body, it’s similar. There are muscles that become contracted and things happen that stop the flow of energy and movement. Our whole system is very similar to a river.

Q: How can individuals help keep that energy moving through this river?

A: We need to ban together. I don’t think it can be just an individual effort. It happens one person at a time, but it’s more of a communal thing, except for the things we can do in our day-to-day life, such as carpool and recycle and reuse.

Q: How does carpooling and recycling help the river?

A: Any way that we can cut down on energy use helps the river. I would love to see manufacturers come up with things that are cheaper. A lot of the women who are caring the most deeply about the situation are those who have the most money to go out and buy products that are river friendly, such as Seventh Generation (a phosphate-free detergent for automatic dishwashers).

It’s really hard to care (about the river) when you can’t put food on the table. It’s hard to go into the grocery store and make those choices when you’re worried about how to put food on the table. That’s a huge issue. I think environmentalism needs to be affordable.

Q: If they can’t afford the more expensive products that help the river clean, what else can they do?

A: I have no idea. This is something we have talked and talked about at our monthly meetings. I don’t have a real good answer. It’s easy for people to say ride the bus, but when you live someplace that it will take you two hours to get someplace because of the bus system the way it is…It all takes money. Nothing is black and white. There is always a gray area.

I went to a movie last week about all the songs Woody Guthrie wrote when they built the Columbia River dams. I have such strong feelings about the dams, and I worry. In this morning’s paper it said they are going to let one run of salmon be extinct and that troubles me. But I love electricity. I love that I was able to move to this area — we complain about a lot of people moving in, but I moved in. It’s all shades of gray. You can’t hate the dams because we need the dams.

Q: Talk about water conservation and what you do.

A: I try and conserve at home, because I think it’s important for everybody to do this. My goal is to make our whole lawn a xeriscape, actually. But so far I only have part of it done. I would hope to never water, except for my vegetable garden. We have put in the soaker hoses that follow the rows, instead of the whole garden, and that saves water. I don’t run the water while I brush my teeth, little things. We’ve put on the shower heads that dispense less water.

The biggest thing I would like to do is make the whole garden a xeriscape. It’s a method of planting native grasses and things that grow naturally. You may have to water them to establish them, but hopefully after the first year or so, you don’t. And there are some lovely things that have been done with xeriscape patterns, rocks and native grasses, instead of having just a green, watered lawn. I guess the downside is that is you don’t have a really nice place to play volleyball or croquette, but if everybody turned part of a lawn over to something like this, it would help.

Q: Where do you get information about it?

A: Washington State University’s Spokane County Cooperative Extension Office. They have tons of literature and once a year, they do a day-long knowledge program where you can go and they’ll teach you all about xeriscaping. And some of the nurseries locally, too, specialize in it.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to add?

A: I wish I had more knowledge. The more I learn about the river, the less I find I know and it frustrates me, because I’m not very patient. I’m somebody who wants to know something right away. This past year, I enrolled at the Community College and I’m taking Spanish classes and it frustrates me because I want to know it right now. Here I’ve had a year of Spanish and I still speak it, hesitatingly, shall we say. That’s how I am with the river. I want to know it all right now. I have a great passion for it, and I hope that my knowledge will grow in accordance with my passion.

Q: What drives you? Why do you do what you do?

A: It has to be something that I love. You have to have a passion. I’m a huge believer in networking. I’m a good networker. I’m good at talking people into things. I can get people excited about things. It’s like the old Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney thing — let’s build a barn and put on a show. I don’t like to do anything I’m not passionate about.

Q: Where do you want your river group to be in five years?

A: This is pie in the sky. In five years, I would hope that we would be a nonprofit organization, a recognized group. I would like this group to have a large impact. I don’t care if people remember who is in it, but I would like people to say, “Oh, there was this group that did this.” I want to be able in five or 10 years to walk the river and say, “Ah, yes, it looks how I want it to and it’s still good.”

Q: Tell us where you were born and raised.

A: I was born and raised in Northern Wisconsin and actually, they have very nice rivers in Northern Wisconsin and they do a nice job taking care of their resources. I left there when I was 18. But I grew up there. My father was a cranberry grower. It was a small town, about 1,000 people, where everyone knew everyone.

Q: Was there a river?

A: There was. The Eagle River. We played on the river all the time. There was a huge park on the river and it was only two blocks from my home. I loved the river. There was a place called Trees for Tomorrow that was a statewide conservation place with trails in the woods and we played there all the time. The Eagle River flows into the Wisconsin River which flows into the Mississippi River.

Q: Is that where your love for rivers began?

A: I’ve never thought about it, but I think it did.