In 2021 when I was still executive director at Nature At The Confluence, I was honored with being named one of Northwest Quarterly’s 25 Most Interesting People of2021. While I don’t think I’m all that interesting, I think what has happened at Nature At The Confluence is very interesting and worth learning about, so read on if you wish….
Article and photo credits to Northwest Quarterly, April 2021
A Series of Intersections
Despite a childhood spent playing in the woods and having toads, frogs, mice and rabbits as pets, Therese Oldenburg never thought she’d wind up in a career surrounded by nature.
But today she divides her time between directing South Beloit’s Nature at the Confluence and running her own marketing firm, Firepoint Media, which works with nonprofits and nature-based organizations.
How she ended up at Nature at the Confluence was a true twist of fate.
“The Beloit 200 group asked me to be on a committee for a new urban environmental center. They knew of my interests in nature and my skills in marketing,” Oldenburg says. “When this beautiful $2 million restoration was finished, it was like, ‘Well, Therese. Go figure out how to do something with this place.’ That’s what I’ve done. I put my background as a naturalist and my background in marketing to work and have been able to bring a lot of people to the restored land to enjoy programs and to volunteer, building excitement in the community about being part of the restoration. It’s my happy place.”
She makes it sound easy.
For decades, Nature at the Confluence – located where Turtle River, Rock River and Kelly Creek meet – was a site where foundries dumped their discarded sand. Today, it’s a 5-acre nature preserve that’s in the midst of a restoration.
“A lot of other debris, glass and garbage have been dumped here over the years, too. It’s not pristine land by any means, but it really is beautiful,” Oldenburg says.
Thanks to a recent grant, dedicated volunteers are continuing to clean up partially hidden Kelly Creek.
“It’s buried beneath the city of South Beloit and it emerges on our property. It used to meander its way through the city, but as the city grew it was more convenient to bury it in a culvert and build roads on top,” she says.
“Tires and other debris have been dumped along it, but we’re restoring it and bringing it back to life.”
Also an armchair genealogist, Oldenburg discovered that not only did her own ancestors know her husband’s ancestors, but around 1900 some of them helped establish the very foundry that once operated near Nature at the Confluence.
“It was one of the organizations that produced the discarded foundry sand that was used as fill on our land,” she says. “I was floored. We had no idea that my husband’s great-grandfather and my great-great uncle founded it together. Having that deep-rooted connection to the land feels like destiny.”
Article and photo credits to Northwest Quarterly, April 2021