SCA Founding President, Elizabeth Cushman Titus Putnam, visited a Dallas Crew.

(more…)

Paul Bindel, SCA Mass Parks AmeriCorps 2008
We did not roll up our sleeves.
We proofed ourselves in plastic and walked
into the rain, to slough in rocks,

to upturn stones. We set them so they
would not wiggle. We imagined what lay
below a mossy corner, a foot of dirt,

by plunging our bars and craning our ears
for the pitch of the ting. We heard muddy
earth give a parting smooch with a schwack

as they rose above ground. We learned that rocks sing
when wet—from spring thaw streams,
from brooks, from a drizzling hour—flecks

of sedimentary sound. We ordered
muddy bogs with the roundest we could find,
and stacked their flatter kin up hills

and windy paths. We cursed
the winter frost for heaving fresh
layers in our way, then laughed,

and blessed it for the crushed
fill those heavy souls would provide.
We smashed our fingers, strained

our backs, and nuzzled our frames
against granite just to move it an inch.
We chose which roots to chop

with a mattock and which to let lie.
We used the sternest stuff for walls
to channel water down a hill, below a trail,

wherever we desired. Our wills were brought
upon the forms of earth and we found
the work firming, marking who we might become.

An SCA Community Crew turns an un-utilized strip of earth into garden beds, the future home of a planting of Sunflowers.

Our partners on this project are The Phase 4 Learning Center and Steel City Biofuels.

(more…)

June 2008 - Pittsburgh, PA

(more…)

by Teresa Shipley

Our week in the Grand Canyon has come to a close, and a few of the numbers are in:

• We pulled over 12,000 weeds.
• We spread nearly ½ acre of mulch (which doesn’t sound like much, until the shovel is in your hands).
• We collectively hiked 27 miles (that doesn’t include our fun-day hikes) in the Canyon.
• We surveyed and GPS’d about 9 miles of National Park boundary fence.
• We de-winterized the native plant nursery and installed a rodent-proof fence.
• We made dozens of new friendships.

(more…)

by Teresa Shipley
Tents unzipped to bright blue skies this morning. Eager students were divided into three hiking groups. The mission: eradication of graffiti within the Canyon and hand-pulling invasive weeds along the way. We also welcomed two visitors: Mike and Brian, videographers from Phoenix who joined us for a few hours to document all this hard work for SCA, AE and, possibly, MTV.

Our group trekked down the Bright Angel trail, one of the Canyon’s busiest routes. We soon discovered we had our work cut out for us; nearly every rock face boasted scratchings of “Eddie Was Here” or “TM + JF.” We used water spray bottles to soften the yellow limestone surface and then gently attacked the graffiti with soft bristle brushes. Other participants patiently rubbed pencil erasers on graphite or charcoal graffiti. (more…)