2013 Army Corps Visitor Use Survey Leader Team #2: Tennessee

The week started off strong with nice weather and lots of surveying.  With nice weather comes lots of visitors to the Army Corps parks and that, of course, means no rest while surveying.  The sun left its mark on all of us, giving some nice tans and a few burns.  Nobody was complaining about this beautiful southern weather.  Even much of the local wildlife was out and about.  Herons, ducks, geese, turkeys, cardinals and the occasional bluebird could be seen at some parks, along with deer, and rabbits.  Eventually the heat and sun subsided and made way for some spring showers that will no doubt help to green up the vegetation.  The rain also brought along some fantastic thunderstorms that lit up the night sky while constantly bombarding it with a strong rumble.  Our two conservation days were successes. We were lucky enough to host the Atlanta crew again.  Together we helped out the Nashville Food Project (http://www.thenashvillefoodproject.org/) again.  Together the 6 of us turned over a bed and planted beans and cucumbers.  It was an incredibly productive and enjoyable time for everyone.  Also that day, Eva, Sophie and Mike participated in a festival that promotes ‘green living’.  We partnered with a local business called Worms Way to help spread the word about composting and vermiculture, and how easy it is to apply it at anyone’s home.  In exchange for this we got 1lb of worms to use to start our own worm bin at the Nashville house.  On our second Conservation day, Sophie and Mike met up with Leah and Clatyon from the Atlanta crew at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to participate in a trash pickup day.  There were many volunteers that helped out that day and prizes were given away for the most trash picked up by a team and also the weirdest item picked up. To our amazement the SCA team of 4 out-competed everyone, and won 4 free pizzas from a local pizzeria outside the park.  It was an awesome day.  The team camped at a secluded spot just across the North Carolina border.  There the team met some botanists who were part of an ongoing study in its 7th year that measures forest structure and lichens.  Mike was able to help out with their final day of data collection, which was a great way to network and gain some professional experience. It’s been a great two weeks and we are all preparing for the end of this spring season.  Sophie is busy finding housing for her summer crew in Oxford, MS, while Mike heard from his first intern that will be staying in Nashville.  There is a lot of work still to be done but we are all happy to be doing it!Written by Mike Vasquez

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of activity and Mike, Sophie and I are in the eye of the storm. We started the month of April by getting down to business. The surveys for the Army Corps of Engineers have been going swimmingly as the weather perked up and the people peeped out of their rainy-weather holes. We have all been working, planning out the rest of the spring program as we’ve all realized we have a little over a month before it’s over. With that, we three put our heads together and locked in our conservation projects, our volunteer opportunities, as well as solidifying the mundane, but necessary, tasks of everyday life.
Mike and I met up with Denise Weyer from Shelby Bottoms Park, who has been an incredible asset in getting our Conservation Project up and running. Then Mike met with an avid birder- Ed Schneider, a bird photographer who has traveled the world and is probably the only one more gung-ho about our workshop besides us. Since we both have an interest in birds and wanted to partner up with Shelby Park to facilitate a workshop focused on the impact of humans to birds and vice versa; as well as understanding that birds are integral to developing the richness and diversity of this earth. We have a workshop scheduled at the end of May where we will both be leading a group of homeschool students! I continued to meet with Denise, as Mike met with a man about “Saving the Cumberland”- an initiative to raise awareness surrounding the rising pollution in the Cumberland River through education and research. Mike also had his own volunteer adventure food sorting 7,000 lbs of food for family in needs for the Second Harvest Non-Profit in Nashville.
The other Conservation Project that I, Sophie and Mike all have been making moves on is our vermicomposting, or as it’s commonly known: “worm bins.” Worm bins are a self-sustaining composting system that we will be experimenting with as none of us have done it before. Although we have all had experiences in composting, we are interested to see how worm bins would work as it would be self-sustaining, more efficient for a shorter time period given to us, and we get to play with worms! As we are trying to do all of our projects on as little of a budget as possible, kind people, donations, gifts, and friends come in amazingly handy. I was able to scrounge up some a truck, shovel, buckets, a drill, and soil from my boyfriend, who is as manly as he gets. We all have been saving up our compost and once we get the worms, we’ll be all ready to go!
In preparation for getting up close and personal with worms, Mike, Sophie and I had the rewarding experience of volunteering with The Nashville Food Project (http://www.thenashvillefoodproject.org/)-. A very inspiring organization, this small group of people plant, harvest, cultivate, prepare and cook meals, then deliver them to various locations throughout Nashville to those in need. It was fun getting dirty in the ground: we helped gardening and stirring the compost. It was even more enjoyable knowing that the people who run The Nashville Food Project clearly care about the love that goes into growing and making healthy, fresh food for the people in need.
This gave us some ideas for our little house Garden. Our Garden came into fruition starting with me and Sophie trekking over to haul 50 cinderblocks into a truck and then from the truck to our back lawn. Needless to say we got a work out that day. After that, our kindly neighbor lent us his rotor-tiller, and I, having no prior experience of this strange contraption, researched and learned the ins and outs of the Mantis. I then started it, tilling the ground, at first having a momentary sense of panic rise in me when I realized I had a death machine in my hands. That quickly subsided as I tilled the earth, gaining control and creating a little plot where we will plant our food.
The two week whirlwind ended with a visit from our supervisor, Alex, where he was able to observe us in our survey skills and sit down with us to play a solid game of “Munchkin”- probably one of the most addicting, complex, and bizarre games out there (and for full disclosure: I won!). Mike and Sophie got to see Shawn Camp, a country artist who has captivated their hearts, and I got to dance to Elton John singing Tiny Dancer. All in all, the month of April is shaping up to be a promising one. Spring has officially arrived: and with that a fresh new excitement in rounding out our Conservation Projects and visitation surveys!

Written by Eva.

Hitch 1
Nine strangers. One house. Many water bottles. And so many hugs. It could easily be summarized as this for our first week of training in Nashville, TN for SCA’s Army Corps of Engineer’s Visitor Use Survey Program. We started off with a bang, hosting the three teams (Nashville, TN, Cumming, GA and Waco, TX) in a modest little home tucked in the funky neighborhood in East Nashville. Although the house was synonymous to Home Alone’s opening scene of Christmas Day scramble, we had a method to our madness and everyone was just happy to be there, getting to know our fellow SCAers in close quarters, playing board games with furious passion, and talking late into the night about our previous experiences in conservation.
The first week of orientation was held at James Percy Priest Visitor’s Center, where Alex, Josiah and Liz taught us the ins and outs of SCA. It was an incredibly informative week, where we did everything from re-thinking our conservation ethics, to role-playing conflict resolution scenarios, to embracing diversity and mastering the ultimate feeling of confusion when it comes to paylocity. For me personally, having no prior experience with SCA, I felt incredibly welcomed and reassured that I would get everything with time. Everyone was incredibly supportive and would lend a helping hand. The group seemed to really bond during this week of orientation, our fearless Project Leaders Sophie (Nashville), Leah (Cumming), and Josh (Waco), all mentoring the members with their invaluable leadership experiences, which came in handy once Friday rolled around; the house transforming into a haven for us as we put our heads down and completed our Work Portfolios for the Spring.
The Work Portfolios are conservation projects that each member of each team designs to fulfill the “core competencies.” The “core competencies” that we are focusing on fall under the four pillars of SCA’s mission statement: Conservation (ecological literacy, conservation history, conservation ethic), Leadership (risk management, leadership development, work readiness), Service (technical skills, project management, reflection), and Stewardship (diversity and inclusion, civic engagement, ecosystem engagement). Using these pillars as guidance to give our ideas direction, we completed at least four project proposals each to work on for the duration of the spring program. As the survey periods will be conducted during the week, we are given one day a week to work on our projects and to fulfill SCA’s mission “to build the next generation of conservation leaders and inspire lifelong stewardship of our environment and communities by engaging young people in hands-on service to the land.”
The week finished with a day off on Saturday, where the 9 strangers had by then become friends, and everyone took the opportunity to soak in the sights of Music City. Some of us went on bike rides while others checked out the downtown area. Fun was had all around, and it was great to relax and enjoy our time together before everyone had to leave for their respective SCA homes in a couple of days.
Sunday and Monday were the days when the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) came into the picture. We started the day meeting Meredith, Dina and Matt, whom we (the Nashville Team) will be working with during the Visitor Use Survey Program. We went over the surveys, familiarizing ourselves with the questions and getting comfortable with different scenarios. Some of the rangers that sat in on the meetings even role-played for us, acting our different characters that we might run across at our different sites- that was one of the most entertaining parts of the day. We also had a chance to travel to two of the sites, setting up the cones and signs so we would know how to do it when Day 1 officially rolled around. We ended that day with a furious relay on the playground, where we got to run around a bit after a productive day in the field.
That night we had our farewell dinner, Sophie finishing off her marathon-week of cooking us all dinner with her Guatemalan breakfast- if you haven’t had this it is amazing, and we were all unbuttoning our pants by the end of the meal. Tuesday morning came too soon, and each team bid us farewell in their own ways: Waco piling into their car with relaxed waves of goodbye, Cumming rambunctiously picking people up in the air. Sophie, Mike and I stood for second, contemplating the emptiness of the house, what we would do with all that empty space. Although we were sad to see our short-lived family go, there was a feeling of excitement in the air: we would soon be starting surveys and our conservation projects, and not a moment was to be wasted. Hello Nashville, here we come!

Written by Eva

Eva originally grew up and is from a small town nestled in the Upper Valley of Vermont. When she's not outside looking up at the sky or getting her hands dirty, she's inside... preferably listening to some jazzy new tunes and sharing them on www.ruckusrhythms.com, a pretty funky music blog y'all should check out. Graduating from UVM, Eva skipped around a bit and lived in India for 5 months working for an organization called Shikshantar, where they focused on upcycling, conservation, and opening up alternate avenues of education and learning. After returning to the States, Eva decided to hike the Appalachian Trail, taking 5 1/2 months for her journey. Completing the hike this past October, Eva jumped at the opportunity to serve for the SCA and to live in a new and totally different environment that is Nashville, TN. And so- here she is!

With extensive leadership experience and a furious hunger to learn from her peers, Eva will bring to the team a love for exploring the culture and music of Music City. With an artsy background and a love to experience the new, Eva hopes to add a splash of creativity and fun to the surveys and conversation projects that will be administered this Spring.

Eva is extremely excited to be a part of the SCA and living in the South. Having a furious love for boiled peanuts and music, it is a prime location to explore her passions. Eva is also super excited to experience the sweltering heat she keeps hearing about. She even got a little spray fan thing for those really swampy Tennessee days! What she is most excited about is integrating herself within the quaint and quirky community of East Nashville, getting to know her neighbors, and to learn more about her conservation ethics within and outside the SCA.