For Sarah Johnson of Wild Rose Education, an environmental education program based in Carbondale, switching between the microcosm of the Roaring Fork Valley and the global scope of climate science can be perplexing.
“It’s kind of incredible,” Johnson told The Sopris Sun. “I sit here in my office in the Third Street Center and I’ll be so lost in all of that … I’ll turn around and then, ‘Oh, there’s Sopris. I’m still here.’”
While, for a while, Johnson has been connecting to the distant north from Garfield County, one of the projects she currently co-manages has done the same.
Float Your Boat is an educational program through which polar educators can directly connect learners with the circulating currents of the Arctic Ocean. Educators can request simple, eight-inch-long wooden boats stamped with a number and a web address. Students can then decorate their boat, which are loaded onto planes and icebreakers headed for the Arctic Circle. The boats are deployed alongside tracking buoys, and after yearlong voyages at sea the boats wash up along distant shores — often in Iceland and other Scandinavian Countries — where beachcombers find and post the discovery locations online.
Through Float Your Boat, the staff at the Rifle Library decorated and deployed a vessel that was found on July 16 north of Hjalteyri, Iceland. A boat that Johnson decorated herself deployed on Aug. 17, 2023. After a year at sea, the “USS Friends” (decorated with the names of Johnson’s friends) was found in Nuuk, Greenland on Aug. 3.
In a way, Float your Boat physically represents what Johnson has done for much of her career, connecting climate scientists. This year, she has worked to connect Colorado with the global climate science community.
Johnson has been working with a team of Colorado educators representing the state through the Earth to Sky program. Through that program, she has actively worked with NASA scientists to bring their data to education spaces.
Additionally, Johnson has been contracted with the educational nonprofit, Lyra, to develop and direct Colorado’s first ever Youth Climate Summit, coming to the Third Street Center May 2-3, 2025.
The Summit is designed to connect youth leaders with field experts, policy makers and each other to develop action plans to address climate change. Applications have opened this week, and interested youth leaders can apply online at www.coyouthclimatesummit.org
While Johnson spends much of her time creating and directing education programs, she noted that some of her most rewarding experiences have been when the roles were reversed. She reflected on one experience teaching at a public school in Utqiagvik, Alaska — a community dramatically affected by coastal erosion.
“My style of education is so interactive, so I would ask kids, ‘What do you think? Tell me what your relationship and perception is.’ To really listen to what they know is priceless in a place that’s so new to me,” Johnson noted.
Cultivating authentic relationships is one of the touchstones by which Johnson navigates her work. Since she volunteers with the Girl Scouts of Colorado, Johnson found time to visit the farthest north Girl Scout Troop in America, and brought KDNK Community Access Radio stickers to trade with Alaska’s public radio stations.
Despite the geographical distance between Colorado and the Arctic Circle combined with the sheer scope of climate change, Johnson finds motivation in being part of a global solution.
“It’s heavy. It’s kind of intense at times. But I know that I’m contributing. Education is a climate solution,” she concluded.
Find out more about Wild Rose Education by visiting www.wildroseeducation.com For more about the 2025 Youth Climate Summit, visit www.coyouthclimatesummit.org