Camas High welcomes ‘moon tree’ to campus

Camas High School is now home to a tree that has literally been to the moon and back.

On April 17, members of the Camas High Green Team facilitated the planting of a very special Douglas fir sapling on a grassy hill near the southwestern edge of campus.

The tree is one of 1,000 “moon trees” grown from seeds that flew around the moon in 2022 as part of NASA’s Artemis I mission.

“This thing has been to the moon and back, and it’s going to live here for, hopefully, the next 100 years or so,” Camas High School science teacher Cory Marshall told the crowd of educators, district administrators and Camas students gathered at the moon tree planting last week.

Marshall said he found out about the moon tree program more than a year ago and put Camas High’s name on the list of schools, museums, libraries and other institutions interested in receiving a moon tree sapling from the U.S. Forest Service.

On Thursday, members of Clark Public Utilities helped plant the tree in its new home outside the high school.

“Over the next 10, 20, 30 years, we’ll be looking at the results of what happens when these things have traveled to space,” Marshall said.

Members of the Camas High Green Team plan to care for the tree, take monthly measurements to record the tree’s progress and eventually hand it off to the next generation of Camas High students.

“We’ve done a lot of tree planting around the county, but nothing quite as cool as this,” Green Team adviser and Camas High science teacher Ali Coker said.

According to the Camas School District, the Artemis Moon Tree program “continues a tradition that began over 50 years ago with the Apollo 14 mission, when astronaut Stuart Roosa carried seeds into lunar orbit.