Kari Goes To Mississippi

Curious seals... As the mini marshmallow makes an arch above my head, I anticipate its landing and open my mouth wide for the delicious event that is about to occur. But at the last second, I realize that my initial toss was overzealous and that if I don’t somehow compensate for my error, the tiny marshmallow will land not in my expectant mouth, but on the floor behind me. So in a single fluid motion, I half jump, half slide into position just in time to catch the sugary delight, at the same time losing my sock footed balance on the slippery wood floor, completely disconnecting with the solid surface into a horizontal position, and finally falling back down to earth in a straight line, every part of my body hitting at exactly the same time. Never before have I come so close to doing what I imagine to look exactly like a Dick Van Dyke fall, and my laughter was so great that it failed to audibly leave my lips, and I was assumed dead on impact by Jacquie. Ironically, it wasn’t the fal...

Looking out at the "great salt marsh." Trees, trees, trees. Well, not actually tress; shrubs really. Wax Myrtle shrubs to be exact. In 2 days, my team, along with a small group of retired nature enthusiasts, planted over 2,000 Wax Myrtles at Mutton Hunk Fen Natural Area Preserve. These shrubs are necessary to the survival of many different types of birds, giving them shelter and sustenance during migration. We first unloaded our little leafy friends from the delivery truck into smaller pickups and trailers. Each plant was plopped into a hole, drilled within long rows throughout 3 fields by a back hoe. Upon the distribution of plants to an entire field, groups of 3 planters would walk down the rows, removing the plastic bucket encasing each plant, and carefully but firmly make it snug in its hole. This process required quite a lot of walking, bending, and kneeling, which is tiring when done for hours on end for multiple days. However, we finished in record time, and ...

Up to my waist in bog water, reinforcing a dock structure. The days are just packed… The last day of January saw us in the windy cold of an open field next to rows and rows of formerly irrigated trees, soon to be bulldozed to the ground. Our mission was to rip up old irrigation hoses in the ground running to each tree, cutting them into manageable sections that we could load into a pick-up truck to haul away. This task, in combination with cutting back overgrown branches from a vehicle pathway in the field, removing plastic tree shelters from dead or self sustaining young trees, and pulling up PVC pipe markers stuck in the ground to mark sections of trees constituted a day of physically draining labor. Besides being heavy, difficult jobs that required trudging through fields of deer scat, the only pathways being those established by the deer themselves, it was a chilly day that got progressively colder and slightly rainy. Let me paint you a picture: Ruth & I putting down st...