Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper intern inspired at a young age to encourage people to get outdoors

Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association summer intern Theadora Duane, of Bloomsburg, checks out macroinvertebrates collected by several kids during a Read and Explore program at the Montour Preserve hosted by the Vernal School Environmental Education Partnership.

​​Theadora Duane was so inspired by trips to Ricketts Glen State Park and hiking the trails of the Montour Preserve and her grandfather’s property as a child with her father that the Bloomsburg native started her own environmental club as a third-grader.

“It was just me and my friends picking up trash at recess, but we thought we were so cool,” she said. “We thought we were saving the world.”

From an early age, she assumed it was normal for everyone to similarly appreciate nature as she worked in environmental clubs, hiked and volunteered with different groups.

“When it came time to decide on college, I really didn’t know what to do. I wanted to go to art school for art conservation, but also do something with science, so then I was thinking art and chemistry,” she said. “But then my mom sat me down and said: ‘Thea, you’ve been an environmentalist since you were like five years old. Why aren’t you doing environmental science?’

“I realized then that this is what you call a passion, and now I am excited to make a career of it.”

Heading into her third year at Dickinson College, Duane is one of three interns for the Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association for the summer of 2024.

“It’s kind of like the butterfly effect thing. I think teaching kids to love the world around them is so critical, so seeing the Vernal School program being so close to home and offering environmental education, I thought that was awesome,” she said. “At first, I didn’t know the Riverkeeper work was even a thing until I was looking into the Vernal School and I think the work is so important because water truly is life. Tying those three things together and getting to work on all three is awesome.”

Listen to the full interview with intern Theadora Duane in our newest episode of the Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Podcast:

She chose Dickinson because of its commitment to sustainability, being part of the Eco-League, while offering field work opportunities that she knew would be both challenging and rewarding to her.

“I was recently talking to my friends about their finals and they mentioned their projects and exams, but then I got to tell them one of my finals was getting driven to the top of a mountain in the Tuscarora State Forest, getting kicked out of the van, given a compass and map, and my final was to get myself out of the woods.

“Orienteering, safety training and field work – I knew every single day that I was going to be out doing something meaningful to me and it’s been awesome.”

When touring Dickinson, Duane found out they had beehives on campus, and she thought the idea of getting involved and “putting on a bee suit was so cool. I just thought I’d do it once, and now here I am having taken a beekeeping course and working in the hives for a year.”

She quickly became fascinated with the bees’ intricate life style.

“They have a regimented society, a social structure that I realize I will likely never understand. But they just know things like if it is 10-2, it is foraging time or if it is below 57 degrees Fahrenheit to cluster together because it is too cold for them,” she said. “They have these different stages of life that the workers go through. The structure and their self-reliance is so interesting.”

Duane operates three hives at Dickinson, and admits that’s plenty for her.

“Don’t get me wrong, beekeeping is a pain. Some people have like 30 hives – they can be a lot of work,” she said. “It is also so much fun to learn from, like for example, the girls, they run the world. Ninety-seven percent of that hive is (managed by) the ladies, and they’re my girls.”

She also gets to see the interconnectedness of nature through her unique beekeeping and pollinator perspective.

“I’ll be out at lab at a lake and I’ll see a honeybee at my feet that I know is mine because they fly like five miles out of the hive so I know that those flowers at the lake that I am doing water testing at are impacting things back at school or making honey that I’m then eating. It can be kind of overwhelming at times realizing just how much you are impacted,” she said. “Like we’ll be driving down the road and I’ll see a field with fertilizers on one side and then on the other I’ll see a pond with nitrification and I’ll know that those two correspond. I think it is beautiful and awesome, but also when we are trying to mitigate all these things there are so many factors to consider.”

Duane is extremely active at Dickinson, participating with the hip hop dance team and continuing her love of music through playing in a band. She has done construction work and welding, is a writing tutor and is a studio art minor at college.

“I think my main hobby is finding new hobbies,” she said, but her passion continues to be advocating for nature and getting people outdoors to connect with it.

“Nature is such a great classroom. Kids this summer (with the Riverkeeper and Vernal School programming) are going to get so much more sitting in a kayak in a lake – maybe falling into the lake – than they will sitting at home and staring at a screen and playing it safe,” she said. “My message to the people is to go outside, people. Go outside.”

And what would Duane’s message be to her younger self, the one starting the environmental club in third grade?

“It’s like the Lorax way of thinking, unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot – one tiny person has the power to make a difference. No matter the size of that difference it is important because if we all have that mindset that I’m just one person and I can’t do anything, we’re never going to get anywhere,” she said. “So I think Baby Thea just needs to keep at it.”

You can contact Theadora Duane via email by clicking here.

Check out bios of the other Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association interns for 2024: Sarah Joy and Jay Schofield.