3/29
This morning we met up with Tony at Clay's Corner, a convenience store where the owner has a possum drop (think the ball drop) every New Year's Eve. This event was even featured on CBS Sunday Morning! Then, we were off to work at the Oland project. We crossed a 100 year-old bridge as we entered the property. This crossing was a little easier than forging the river as we did yesterday, an event that brought Tony to us in a truck today instead of his normal Jeep (apparently it didn't quite survive the river crossing).
We got a lot more work done today due to our full-day schedule and experience from yesterday. We worked really hard trying to get through a 200 yard range covered in Japanese Honeysuckle, Multi-Floral Rose, and Oriental Bittersweet. A lot of the time it felt like a tug-of-war battle with the plants. We all came back with some scratches from the thorns and some of us even came back with a little bit of a sunburn. We had another delicious lunch provided by a volunteer from the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition. We finished strong and were surprised at how clear the land was after we had taken out all of the invasive plant species. We put in some live stakes, sections of Dogwood trees that would grow into trees to shadow the water and provide fortification on the bank. Tony documented much of our work; hopefully we will be able to get the pictures up later! We were proud of ourselves and Tony seemed to be happy with our work, too.
We headed back to the house after work to shower and rest a bit. Some of us headed off to visit the Goldhagen Art Glass Studio and Gallery where Larry showed us some of the pieces he and the other artist had created. He was very friendly and even explained some of the process to us and invited us to watch them blow glass tomorrow. We returned home to a home-cooked meal from the rest of our group of hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. The family-style meal is a wonderful part of the day!
After dinner we rushed off to the John C. Campbell Folk School to join the local community for a night of contra dancing. All of the locals were very welcoming and kept pulling us onto the dance floor. Even Andy got his groove on! The live music, spinning, and promenading were a great way to wind down after a hard day of work. Now, we are getting ready for another night filled with our new favorite game, Mafia.
3/30
Today was a nice change of pace for us because we didn't work on invasive plants (so they didn't invade our mid-day naps' dreams). Because the forecast had a 90% chance of rain, we instead made arrangements to work for the Hinton Center (which is the organization accommodating us with our wonderful lake house this week). The program we worked on was called New Homes Self-Help Project. It's very similar to Habitat for Humanity. All families have to put sweat equity into their homes. Also, neighborhoods that are made up of these houses all work on each others at the same time, and no one is allowed to move into his/her home until the whole group of them all have been completed .
Specifically, our group had two special tasks. Our fearless site leaders (Cole and Max) worked with the director, Charles Penland, "venting" (i.e. attaching vents from the dryers to the basement to the outside). Cole got to use some big bad power tools which Max could neither operate nor pronounce. The others all got their hands dirty—or wet, rather—with some PAINT! They worked with another Hinton Center employee named Darrin on a house for a woman named Amanda. Amanda was so sweet. She has four kids, seven and under and rich platinum blond hair. Perhaps she was just thirty. She worked on painting with the group and complimented Sarah on her priming skills. Throughout the day of painting, Darrin tried multiple times to convince us to come back another day because of how efficient we were and the hours of work we were saving them. (Apparently, we saved them a total of three days worth of work.) The group as a whole loved this work because we could interact with the family whose life we were improving.
For lunch we drove back to the lake house, and Andy made the delicious burgers. Then it was back to the ole nose to the ole grindstone. We continued with the work we were doing before lunch, but we had a wonderful new addition—Sarah's boombox and mix c.d. So we jammed out to some tunes which both enhanced the worker spirit and overall productivity. Then we cleaned up all the paint tools, which turned into a mild water fight.
Afterwards, a few of us got dropped off at the glass studio where they watched professional glass blowers blow glass. The rest of us came home early and ate Max's unbeatable peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Then we all passed out for about two or three hours because, well, we've been doing a lot of hard work consisting of early days and late nights! After our semi-evening siesta, it was dinner time. Amy, Amelia, Andy, and Sarah created our festive quesadillas, Teddy chopped the tomatoes. Adriana and Laura slept. For the first time all week, the house was totally quiet…for about five minutes.
We have realized we are over halfway through our trip. The general consensus is that we love it here and never want to leave. The group has become quite attached and bonded into a family. We even have a huge circle table where we eat all our meals together and a downstairs living room filled with beds where we all crash together for our aforementioned communal naps.
Now we are about to enjoy some of Sarah's self-proclaimed "Cookie Bars from Heaven," then cleanup then play games for the rest of the night. Also, yesterday Sarah fell into a beaver hole, and we discovered a tree house and hiked to an outdoor chapel. Holla holla holla!
How much glass could a glass blower blow if a glass blower could blow glass?
- Murphy ASB
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