Week 26

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 then moved on to picking up hundreds of pounds of trash and recycling strewn throughout a forest. Apparently there are all kinds of miniature “dumps” like this out in the middle of nowhere, because people that lived in those areas found it easier to get rid of their trash this way than to take it somewhere.

Along with picking up this 50 year old trash, we also learned how to survey land, and were given the responsibility of surveying several ditches, the information being necessary for the preserve manager to ascertain whether or not certain waterways could be blocked without flooding neighboring pieces of land. Also, Cain and I got to chainsaw some invasive species of trees, so that was fun too. All in all, it was a fantastic week! The weather was mostly beautiful, and there was a day or two that I worked in short sleeves. This is February, right?? My summer tan barely had a chance to fade, and already it’s returning.

Fire lining Wax Myrtles out of the truck.

Highlight of the week: getting to see an old house torn down by Richard, my site supervisor. We also made it into the Eastern Shore Newspaper (not positive that’s what it’s called), so that’s kind of neat.

In other news, I’m trying to be a vegetarian after reading the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. After all the disturbing stuff I’ve learned about factory farming, I can’t so much as look at meat without getting queasy. It’s been over a week since I ate meat, and so far, it hasn’t been too much of a struggle, although, I haven’t been offered a cheese burger yet either. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I wrote a new song today that combines some ideas I picked up from reading Zeitoun (I highly recommend this one. It’s by Dave Eggers), The Road, and The Giver. Good thing I have my handy dandy portable recorder with me so I can let you hear it :) Check on my Facebook if you're interested, since I have no idea how to post it here.

Putting the trailer pin in for the tractor ramp.

We’ll be leaving Virginia this coming Thursday in order to start our next project in Hattiesburg, MS. I’m excited about the new project, but I’ll certainly miss the Eastern Shore and all the extremely cool people I’ve grown so fond of here.