Video Case Study on the St. Croix River: The Beast

[Adoption site 2: Northern St. Croix River.] Folks who’ve spent any time at this blog know that we’re not just cleaning-up a waterway or two… we’re also doing a bit of journalism, sharing the things we learn along the way. Our chronicle has included the written word, radio and television interviews, and visual images. Most of the images we’ve captured are in the form of still photography, but this fall, we began to experiment with the idea of building a video journal, too.

In mid-September, I mounted an old “Hi-8” digital video camera to the dashboard of a Pungo 14 kayak, with the intention of capturing some images from the northern St. Croix River, and documenting the process we call geo-trashing (capturing photos and GPS waypoints of debris for later removal). But about half-way through the trip, I came across a full bag of trash floating in the river.

I couldn’t resist.

So, instead of shooting simple river footage that day, I documented the recovery of a bag of trash—via kayak—from a relatively remote stretch of the St. Croix River. You can view a small screen-size version by clicking on the play/pause buttons below, or you can see a larger screen version of the video by clicking here: [Kayak Recovery: 5 minutes, 54 seconds.] As always, your questions and comments are welcome; just drop me an email.