Adjacent to Downriver Golf Course, on 2.3 acres along the Spokane River, sports enthusiasts have created a course for disc golf, a game where discs are pitched into baskets. The area also boasts walking trails and wild vegetation. The site was saved from condominium development in 1996 when conservation futures tax money, paid for by Spokane County landowners, was used to purchase the land and preserve it as community green space.

Editorial board member Rebecca Nappi recently talked with Mary Kunkel there. A 57-year-old massage therapist, Kunkel has started a women’s river group to get citizens involved in everyday efforts to keep the river healthy and accessible to all.

Rebecca Nappi: Describe the first time you saw the Spokane River and your reaction to it.

Mary Kunkel: The first time I saw the Spokane River was right before we moved here in 1988. We had come here from the East Coast and I was just blown away that there was something of this beauty that ran right through the city of Spokane.

Q: How do you interact with the river now?

A: Mostly what I do is walk (along) the river. My favorite place is Riverside State Park, because it’s so close. I just can’t believe that within 10 minutes of downtown Spokane we have this wonderful resource. Or I cycle on the Centennial Trail.

Q: Tell us how your river group came to be.

A: I spent a long time just thinking about the river and I kept running into other women – some younger, some older – who cared passionately about the river. I said, “Let’s get together.” So we started meeting last August.

Q: How did you find the women?

A: They are women I met through my work or the women I knew through my work knew someone else. It was pure and simple networking.

Q: How many are there of you?

A: We started out with only six. Sometimes we’re 12 or 15 and we hope to keep growing. We’re not even a year old yet.

Q: Do you have an official name?

A: The River Sisters. One of our group members came up with this and everyone loved it.

Q: And what do you discuss at your meetings?

A: We meet once a month, and we discuss a variety of things. We have had people come in and speak to us about the aquifer. We’ve had someone come in and talk to us about simplifying our lives, cutting down on our usage of nonrenewable things, because everything goes back to the river, everything affects it.

Q: What is your hope for your River Sisters group?

A: I hope we grow very large. I hope we attract lots of members. Almost every month, I have someone call who has heard of it and say, “I’d like to join.”

Q: Daydream about some actions you’d see the River Sisters taking.

A: We’ve talked about reaching the young moms in the community, because that’s where a lot of things start. One of the things we’ve talked about is distributing literature this fall at day care centers and at schools so that mothers with children can start thinking about their children’s future and the river.

Q: What would you put in that literature?

A: That it makes a difference if you recycle. It makes a difference if you reuse things. It makes a difference if you carpool, if you ride the bus. People think they can’t do anything. So people don’t. And that was one of the reasons why I started this group.

Q: How does carpooling and recycling help the river?

A: Any way that we can cut down on energy use helps the river.

Q: What do you want people to know about the river?

A: Good things do come to an end. The river could become so polluted that we won’t be able to use it the way that we do. It’s really precious. People who have lived here their whole lives have no idea what a treasure it is to have this river.

Q: What is the biggest threat?

A: The biggest threat is probably complacency, because (the river) is here and it’s always been here. It will probably continue to be here, but maybe not in the form that we know it.

Q: The land we’re on right now used to have a nursing home on it. Then Dr. Hrair Garabedian, a Spokane cardiologist, bought it and rather than sell to a developer, he sold it for use as parkland. Describe what you think this land would look like now if it had been developed into condos.

A: They’d probably be lovely condos and there’d be a lot of nice people living here, but I think it would have lots of signs posted that say, “Private, no trespassing.” In the distance now we can see people walking with dogs and there are people playing disc golf and none of that would be here. It would be a gated community that would serve very nicely the people that lived there, but the people like me, that don’t have enough money to buy a condo here, we would be closed out. There would be no access. It would be a shame.

Q: Why?

A: I think the more common good we can get from a piece of property, the better. I would so much like for everybody to use all aspects of the river and not limit it to just the people who have enough money to live in a certain place.

Q: We’re sitting across the river from the Centennial Trail, a project activated by citizens, most notably a man named Denny Ashlock who has since died. What do you think of the trail?

A: I love the trail. I’ve seen other cities with trails but I think this is the best. You can get on it right downtown and go all the way to state line if you choose. You can pass through areas that are wild and areas that are right in town. I know someone who lives on the trail and she goes out her back door and gets on the trail in rollerblades.

Q: You help bodies heal for a living. What analogy can you make between human bodies and river bodies?

A: I had to do a presentation to a group of massage therapists where we were talking about releases in the body of energies and muscles. I stood up and did a thing about the Columbia River and how the dams were put in and stopped energy, stopped the water from flowing. In a body, it’s similar. There are muscles that become contracted and things happen that stop the flow of energy and movement.

Q: How can individuals help keep that energy moving through this river?

A: We need to band together. I don’t think it can be just an individual effort.

Q: Talk about water conservation.

A: The biggest thing I would like to do is make my whole garden a xeriscape. It’s a method of planting native grasses and things that grow naturally. You may have to water them to establish them, but hopefully after the first year or so, you don’t. And there are some lovely things that have been done with xeriscape patterns, rocks and native grasses, instead of having just a green, watered lawn. If everybody turned part of a lawn over to something like this, it would help.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to add?

A: The more I learn about the river, the less I find I know and it frustrates me. I want to know it all right now. I have a great passion for it and I hope that my knowledge will grow in accordance with my passion.