Jon Soul started by describing his childhood in Los Angeles and Shreveport, and recognizing the concreted Bayou Pierre that reminded him of the concreted rivers in L.A. He noted that the concreted river didn't give him a sense of a waterway providing wildlife. He moved to Shreveport as an adult and lived a block away from the bayou. Later, once his children were of school age and attending Montessori and he would take his children to look at the Anderson Bayou lake. Later, as a middle school instructor, he took students to paddle the in the bayou lake, and found it was a channel going through Wright Island. He didn't consciously make a connection between that and Pierre Bayou. He then went to the new map room at the LSUS library and was shown maps and realized that the bayou was part of a channel that went from the Red River to Pierre Bayuo, and right by where his house is now. In the meantime Jon joined ABetterShreveport, a group that was talking about greenways, trals, and bike paths and began to look at the area as place for a trail. He also had convinced the school to allow him to take the middle schoolers on an annual adventure trip to have outdoor education experiences. Eventually he took them south of the city and Jon said it is among the most beautiful waterways in he's ever seen in Louisiana.
Jon showed the presentation he made with his middle school students, available for your viewing pleasure [to be inserted here].
Jon Soul is Director of Outdoor Education at the Montessori School for Shreveport. He was a Geography major and Geology minor at the Univsersity of Minnesota Duluth, where he was also a kyak instructor for years and has a paddling background that includes whitewater river kyaking and long-distance sea kyaking.
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