Greetings, SCA fans! This is one of the final reports from the SCA survey crew in Oxford, MS, and we’re going out in style. You’re brave SCA crew has been facing down the wind and rain off of a tropical storm, but we are undeterred in our awesomeness. After this weekend, we will have finished our scheduled survey periods, and it has been one long summer.
But we’ve also been working in other ways. For our last conservation project, we went down to Grenada Lake and split into two groups. One group refurbished the Army Corps’ fitness trails in the park – no mean feat considering how hot it was that day. The other group dedicated themselves to fixing up a new water safety display in the lake’s visitor center. Master photographer Josh House traveled up and down the lake getting scenic panorama shots to adorn the background, while your fearless field leader made information sheets with water safety instructions and statistics and collected posters, pamphlets, and information sheets the Army Corps had already published. We opened up the display case, climbed into it, and made a colorful, eye catching, and informative display on how to stay safe in the water.
But it hasn’t been all work. Last week, we took a group trip down to New Orleans, the first time most of us had been down to the Big Easy. In addition to walking through the historic and colorful French Quarter and sampling authentic Cajun cooking, we took a tour of a wildlife preserve North West of the city. We went out to the bayou and saw plenty of exotic plants and animals, even if we couldn’t spot any alligators in the wild, as Lacey was very intent on that. We did get to eat some alligator sausage however.
Back in Oxford, we were able to take in some culture and going on an evening art walk down on the town square. We got to see the varied works of student, amateur, and professional artists. The works ranged from the beautiful to the profound to the garish to the nonsensical – kind of like Mississippi itself.
As mentioned earlier, this has been a long hot summer, and I think people are ready to bring it to a close. However we do have one major project looming over us before we go our separate ways – recording instructional videos for the next SCA survey crew. These movies will be so good, they’ll be certain to cement our place as heroes in the annals of SCA lore. Ciao!
