A Wonders of Water Festival at WNC Nature Center

Drop into the Wonders of Waters Festival and the grand opening of the special traveling exhibit, “Native Waters”, Saturday, August 9th from 10:00am to 4:00pm, at the WNC Nature Center, 75 Gashes Creek Road, in East Asheville.

The Nature Center will celebrate our most precious resource, water, while teaching what all of us can do to protect it.  Numerous local nonprofits and government agencies (specifically,  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Project WET, Buncombe County Soil and Water Conservation District, Riverlink, and Haywood Waterways) will be here to promote water conservation, recreation, and awareness.  The Center will be giving away water conservation kits free to the first 30 families entering that day. Other water conservation items will be available at cost or as prizes during the day. Vegetarian food will be served exclusively to highlight the fact that  vegetarian diets use far less water than meat based diets.   Other fun activities include collecting aquatic insects from the Swannanoa River, participating in enrichment activities with the Center’s aquatic animals (the River Otter and the Northern Water Snake), and otherwise getting all wet at a big community water party!  Run on down for gallons of fun in the sun! 

That same day will be the grand opening of “Native Waters”, a national traveling exhibit from Bozeman, MT focused on Native American perceptions of water and its conservation. This exhibit juxtaposes themes of water cycle science with Native American regard for water.  It will provide a powerful and multidimensional perspective of water as something spiritually significant as well as precious in a very practical sense. Visitors will do things such as pump “rain” over a model landscape with urban and rural sections and see first hand the relative absorption capacities of each type of landscape.  Children will race marbles through a landscape trying to avoid nonpoint source pollution on their way to the river.  Certain panels have audio components with Native American elders speaking of their regard for water and its meaning. The exhibit will be hosted by the WNC Nature Center until the end of October and is made possible by a generous grant from the Pigeon River Fund of the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina.

"We are very excited and proud to be able to share the "Native Waters" traveling exhibit with Nature Center visitors. This wonderful exhibit will help us educate and fascinate visitors about the intricacies of all life forms dependent on water as well as the strong connection and reverence that Native Americans have for this precious resource. We will be able to also highlight the need for good stewardship of water and present many practical methods for responsible water resource management. We are grateful for the generosity of the Pigeon River Fund of the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina that made this special exhibit possible," said Bob Fay, Nature Center Operations Manager. For more information on either the Wonders of Water Festival or the "Native Waters" exhibit, please contact Dan Clere, Nature Center Education Specialist, at (828) 298-5600 ext. 403.