Originally published on August 5, 2011 on mainlinemedianews.com

By Alan Thomas athomas@mainlinemedianews.com

It's hard to believe that you're in Tredyffrin Township.

Ray Clarke calls it "the Northwest Frontier," as Diamond Rock Preserve's 66 acres lie north of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and just a bit east of the Route 29 slip-ramp construction on the south-facing slope of Diamond Rock Hill. It's about as far away from Main-Line Suburban Tredyffrin as you can get and still be in the township. ...continue reading

Follow nearly a dozen SCA members working coast to coast as they blog from the field in real time. Together, we’ll embark on a summer of personal, professional and outdoor exploration. Take a minute to share your thoughts and experiences with this summer's authors.

Meet the first four of the nearly dozen Follow Me authors as they share their summer of conservation and exploration with us.

Serena Doose, Aroostook NWR
"When climbing a tree, I need to trust that I can indeed control my arms and legs, and that I am not just going to randomly fall out of the tree. I am in control. It's such a liberating feeling."

Kayla Morain, SW Louisiana NWR
"I am blessed that I get to have this opportunity. Everyone has a starring role in conservation because we all play a role on this earth. What can be more important than the Earth we share with each other? And if I, the artsy Texan who can't tell the difference between a crow and a grackle - I can now - can play a role, then you certainly can make a difference as well."

Katie Serock, Rachel Carson NWR
"I love how different every day is at Rachel Carson. One day I'll be on the beach, another I'll be in the salt marsh, and then the next day I'll be in the office working on some type of project. There are only four weeks left until the end of my internship so I'm going to continue to take in every moment and enjoy the time I have left here."

Alexis Herb, Minnesota Valley NWR
"It was definitely worth being out in the elements, even though I suspect my jeans will never be dry again. The lightning shows in Minnesota are much brighter and send more bolts down to earth and through the sky than the ones I'm used to. If absolutely nothing else, I'll remember the thunderstorms here for years to come."

“SCA provided me with my first big job adventure,” Sarah Dylla said of her internship at Virgin Islands National Park. The ad might have read: Virgin Islands National Park seeks a cultural landscape planner for historic site in ruinous state on deserted island in former commercial hub of West Indies. Must be OK with mosquitoes [lots!] indoor camping [electricity spotty], rats roaches, lizards. But, also, white sand beaches, amazing barbecue, wonderful people.

“When I saw the position description on the SCA website, I knew it was for me. It spoke to me! I was very interested in the challenge of preserving cultural heritage for future generations. I called Mark Hardgrove, the VIIS Superintendent, and forced him to hire me,” Sarah said.

Mark apparently didn't need much convincing. “Within two weeks of asking SCA to help us find an intern, we had a list of impressive applicants, but when we saw Sarah’s qualifications, there was no question. She was it.”

Right out of college with a degree in art and architectural history, Sarah was to work with an interdisciplinary team of local planners, high school teachers, the St. Thomas Historic Trust, and park professionals to develop a draft cultural landscape plan for Hassel Island in St. Thomas harbor. Sarah’s specific assignment was to determine the site’s period of significance; inventory the elements that were still on the landscape; determine how best to interpret the history and artifacts of the site to visitors; create a plan, and gather public input before submitting it to the National Park Service for funding and implementation. She had six months.

For extra credit, she was to develop a trails plan for the island.

Acquired by the Park Service in 1978 and left untouched until now, the site was in a “severe state of ruin” according to Hardgrove. Immediate work was needed to stabilize crumbling and collapsing historic structures to make it safe for visitation.

While the site has been occupied for thousands of years, it was determined that its heyday had been the mid-19 century when prevailing trade winds brought sailing ships directly to the West Indies and St Thomas harbor, known as the best shelter in the Caribbean. When the Royal Mail Steam Packet located its West Indies hub there, Hassel Island became a bustling trade center. It was the age of steam. Coal to power the huge ships arrived via sailing vessels, slower but cheaper, and was carried onto steamships by local women.

One of the significant historical elements on Hassel Island, the Creque Marine Railway, had been used to hoist ships as big as 700 tons out of the water for repairs. The marine railway was in operation right up into the mid-60s and its huge Boulton steam engine is the only one of its kind known to still exist.

Sarah recently presented the draft plan at a public meeting where it was extremely well received. “Everyone melted after she spoke,” Hardgrove said. “She convinced them to preserve the site in its 19th century state rather than cover it with palm trees.”

Superintendent Hardgrove had very kind works for Sarah and SCA. “She was awesome. Every time we have used the SCA, it gets better and better. It is one of the solutions to many of our problems. Not just for the quality of the interns, which is fantastic, but for the return on our investment. We get great value. The interns are very project oriented. ” 

The plan will be submitted to the Park Service soon with 2013 as the target date for opening the Hassel Island National Historic Site [confirm exact name] to the public. Exhibits are to be constructed based on Sarah’s 3D mockups. And, yes, she did manage to do the trails plan as well.

As for Sarah's next adventure, she’s headed to a job with the University of Virginia as a digital humanities specialist. Her dream -- work for the Park Service again someday.  

by Anna Brown
When I was 15 years old, I met two people who changed my life. Their names were Steve and Brooke, and they were quite the pair. Steve was a graduate student from Washington State, somewhat quiet and reserved, but at the same time wonderfully sincere and full of random information that made him the best trivia player I had ever met. Brooke was a fearless twenty-something year old who was training for a marathon and had a chipped-tooth grin so wide and cheeks so rosy that her smile was contagious. My first encounter with Steve and Brooke was at an airport, where (you guessed it), they had come to meet me and five other wide-eyed and red-blooded teenagers for an SCA High School Conservation Crew at Wind Cave National Park.

There is more than I can list that was magical about that crew: being away from home for four weeks, sleeping under the stars, learning how to cook, building a bridge with nothing but hand tools and logs, wearing a birthday cape one day while working on that bridge (it was my sixteenth), climbing the highest mountain in South Dakota, discovering fluffer-nutter sandwiches, climbing a way higher mountain in Wyoming, spelunking in one of the world’s longest caves, and discovering unexpected friendships that would change the way I thought about the world. It wasn’t until years later, when I became an SCA crew leader myself, that I realized how much of that “magic” was not merely serendipitous, but directly attributable to the tireless and dedicated work of Steve and Brooke.

Though the intimate details of Steve and Brooke’s personal experiences with our crew will never be fully known to me, I’ve realized that part of their experience must not have been so different than that of SCA crew leaders today.  Here at crew leader training, I suddenly sense that I am more united with Steve and Brooke now than I was when I was fifteen years old (though I have been out of touch with them for years). That’s because now, I share in their vision, as all SCA crew leaders of the past and present do.  We’re part of a circle that never diminishes – it is only capable of growing larger.

The energy at training is contagious.  Last summer, my crew members invented a word that is the best I have yet come across to try and describe the SCA energy that was present then and is here now: posi-enthusi-tude.  That’s right: positive, enthusiastic, attitude.  It’s the kind of feeling you get when you look out at the horizon and see endlessness.  It’s the wave of heat that flushes across your chest when you realize something that makes you feel expansive.  It’s spring.  It’s starting over.  It’s sensing the limitlessness in the complexity of a single flower.

We come from all walks of life. We’re college students, and school teachers and mothers and fathers, and gourmet ice cream connoisseurs. We vary from the wandering types to the family types to the professionals, and everything in between. We come from the east coast, west coast, no coast, and some of us have been coasting for so long it is hard to define where we come from. But we all have one thing in common – we are all dedicated to empowering young people and hold a conviction that the outdoors is our greatest classroom. We are united in our vision of the future - one where all people tread mindfully on this great landscape of life and hold each other up when we have to scale mountains.  Above all else, we hold in our hearts an unwavering faith in the power of young people, and we find hope in that. The shirts on our backs say “SCA”, and we wear them proudly, because this is the organization that has brought us together to do the great work.

And when we gaze up at the stars at night, we remember that we are all sleeping under the same roof.

I’ve got three weeks left to prepare for the summer crew season.  This time around, I’ll be leading crews at Yosemite and The Virgin Islands National Park. There is so much hard work that goes into these crews even before they begin.  Contacting students, writing letters, communicating with agency partners, completing paperwork and planning logistics is all part of the job description of an SCA Crew Leader. But the most important component to our preparation occurs internally – it is the intricate work that we must do inside each of our hearts and heads before any of this can begin. So here I stand grinding my feet into the ground, and I pick up a Pulaski – the empress of tools.

Ahead of me on the trail I see the faces of all the 2011 high school participants, who will soon arrive wide-eyed and red-blooded at airports across the country.  Behind me, I see Steve and Brooke, and I remember one of the first things they taught me about trail work. They taught me that trails are hand hewn. They taught me that the work is a slow, mindful process. And deliberate. But that when it’s all said and done, you’ll be able to walk an unwavering path. You’ll be able to stand and gaze out at the horizon, and know that is endless – that it stretches far beyond all these things that are immediately in front of us, these distractions that sometimes block our view.

In my mind, I’m out on that horizon, and I’m holding a Pulaski.  I picture Steve’s quiet gaze, the way he listened so intently whenever we talked, like there was nothing more important in the world.  And I picture Brooke’s rosy cheeks and chipped-tooth smile. I grin. We all grin.

We’re all in this together.

Crew Leader Training, Charlestown NH, May 13, 2011

Carpentry Skills Training

Measuring

Master Lew

Doug

Teamwork

Clothesline

Ray Auger

Rigging Instructor - Will

Amanda and JR

Amanda

Rigging

Return to Hands On