Jeff Colton explains to his young listeners how their tour will actually include a visit inside Mason Dam.

“We’ll be underneath that road, but way down,” he says, pointing up 175 feet to where a gravel road traverses the top of the dam.

At this news, several of the youngsters from Haines Elementary School start whispering to each other.

“We’re going into a cave!” Lane Collier, 6, says with the big smile of an adventurer.

“Why are we going in a cave?” kindergartner Daebria Stewart whispers back, not sounding quite as excited.

But each of the kids climb into the tunnel and walk beside the giant pipes that carry water through Mason Dam to the Powder River.

All carry a smile the entire way.

The tour was part of Haines’ annual Outdoor School for grades K-2. All morning on Thursday, the students rotated through stations at the Powder River Recreation Area.

Sharon Defrees, recently retired from teaching science at Baker High School and working as a teacher on special assignment this year to mentor elementary teachers in science, pulled on tall wading boots to provide instruction on macroinvertebrates found in Powder River, such as dragonflies and mayflies.

After hearing Defrees’ explanation, the kids trooped back to the picnic table to examine samples of water with a magnifying glass.

When Mirra Cole, a kindergartner, found a wiggling insect, she sucked it up into a tube for a closer look. Then she compared it to the sheet filled with drawings of macroinvertebrates that indicate a healthy stream or an unhealthy stream.

Across the river, the kids pieced together pine needles, moss, sticks and other forest debris to create plant people on a piece of paper. At the next station, students worked off the chill of 34-degree weather by jumping inside hula hoops placed on the ground.

Isaac Cyr, a fish and game officer with the Oregon State Police, and Jim Maddox talked about wildlife management and had samples of the animals hunted locally — mule deer, elk, a cougar and a bear. (Most kids bravely touched the bobcat fur.)

See more in the Oct. 16, 2017, issue of the Baker City Herald.