August 27, 2012

First Day of Work



Today was my first day working for the National Park Service! It was a day for getting oriented – to government protocols for using computers, but also to the beautiful Mountain Farm Museum and Oconaluftee River. The museum is a collection of original structures – a house, barn, blacksmith shop, corn crib, spring shed, and others from dwellings originally scattered across these mountains. Hogs and chickens mill about, and original tools and other artifacts depict the way of life of (mostly white) settlers in these parts. The GRSM (the official government acronym for this park) has largely tiptoed around the Cherokee story. As Bess says, “we don’t want to tell their story for them, and they have a visitor center devoted to that themselves.” My colleagues express a desire to incorporate Cherokee history into the park narrative, but don’t feel adequately equipped to initiate a co-authorship.

As I meandered through the Visitor Center I paused to chat with two older couples relaxing on the porch. They were very interested in my Indian heritage, my non-Indian husband, how we met, why we lived in Singapore, complimented us on our plans to have both adventures and kids, and expressed astonishment at how many places I’d lived. As I walked inside, and looked at photographs of the old settlers, I thought about the people who spent their whole lives in this place. Tilling the same soil, making sorghum molasses with the same neighbors, reshaping the same piece of iron into tools and horse shoes every year. And even about those visitors I met, who lived their whole lives in Kentucky, and thought how peculiar it was for me to feel connected to so many different places.

Walking back to the office I spied a large Indian family, picnicking under a tree behind our building, next to the river. My colleagues observed that Indian visitors and those of other, certain ethnicities, seem especially content to seek out a quiet, undesigned and ungroomed space to commune with nature and each other. (I didn’t tell them that I’d witnessed the same group in a shouting match in which one young man stormed off, followed closely by two relatives!) I thought about my own family’s tradition of walking/biking/roller-skating to Singapore’s Botanical Gardens every Sunday when I was a kid, about the African-American families barbequing in Anacostia Park, the Salvadorian and Mexican families at every picnic table in Rock Creek, and it made me glad to be a brown woman working in the service of this park, and donning the volunteer uniform come tomorrow.

At lunch I met a volunteer from the area, who I asked about the local old time scene. She was a great resource, and pointed me to two upcoming music festivals, and the monthly jam that happens right here in the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. The South District supervisor is a budding guitar player, and we stoked each others’ enthusiasm, exchanging song titles, sheet music, and stories about communities of musicians. I charged home with my park radio and uniform, pulled out my mandolin and played through all my tunes that appeared on the Oconaluftee jam list. My fingers and hands are out of shape, but eager.

I tossed some spinach, almonds, and blueberries into my tiffin, packed it into my bag along with my cell phone, and rode a few miles into town to eat dinner on Cherokee Welcome Center bench and call Brian. Riding home I took the Oconaluftee River Trail, confirming my original assumption that my 3-speed Kabuki is not well-suited for trail-riding. I passed a jogger, dog-walkers, and fishermen, finally riding back across the Mountain Farm Museum field. What a magical time of day, spent gently rumbling beside that tall grass, golden in late afternoon light.

Reading about the unique biodiversity of this park – the sheer numbers of rare, threatened, and resurrected animal and plant species –made my head spin. I sat outside at a picnic table, under a hemlock that has not yet succumbed to the hemlock woolly adelgid, needles falling on the pages as I read, and marveled that such a place as this exists at all, and that I should be so fortunate that its lifetime intersects with mine. The words from a Tabasco Donkeys song, which paraphrase Edward Abbey, are in my head constantly: “it’s not enough to fight for the land, it’s even more important to enjoy it while you can, while it’s still here.”

Reading about the various environmental threats affecting the park also filled me with a sense of inevitability that made me wonder how environmental scientists maintain a sense of optimism. My hat goes off to those, like my sister, who know more about what damage is being done, and what it would take to slow or halt it --- they must know, even more keenly than the rest of us, how remarkably precious it all is.

August 26, 2012

Settling in Shaconaqe


I have a 12-week internship in Great Smoky Mountains National Park this autumn. Last weekend Brian helped me move in, and we began exploring. The first time I came here was with my dear friend, Virginia, and the last time I was here was when thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail with my dear friend, Christian. So the love affair with "the place of blue smoke" continues.