the WHOLE POINT of my YAV year

Since my last post, I have continued the trend of communion twice a week, except this week, I've helped serve it. That's right-- I'm now an ordained Ruling Elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA). This is my first step in figuring out how I'm going to follow this call to serve the church as an environmentalist. I had to make a lot of promises about my commitment to the church and to furthering the church. It was a very sweet and meaningful parting gift from my beloved friends at First Presbyterian Church of Bayou Blue.



My last official day of work was July 23. On Wednesdays I give wetlands presentations to Project Homecoming volunteers, either as a walking tour of Bayou Sauvage if weather permits, or as a lecture at the Volunteer Village. It's been a really cool way to spread the story of South Louisiana and give a little geographic context to the people rebuilding New Orleans.

On Wednesday, July 23, the skies weren't looking promising, and the forecast showed scattered thunderstorms. I was very disappointed to spend my last evening of work, my last presentation, indoors. I was still very excited to talk about the wetlands and environmental conservation.

My talks last about 45 minutes, going over how the landscape of South Louisiana was formed, what has gone wrong with that environment, and what is being done to make it better. I get really, really excited. Sometimes I jump up and down a little. Sometimes I yell a little. But sometimes people find my enthusiasm inviting and come to ask me questions afterwards.

This is how I met Adam. He's from Georgia, and he's really excited about the church. He's really excited to stay with the church and do things in the church. We talked for at least half an hour about all of the different things we've been working on-- energy conservation in his case, natural resource conservation in mine, and what kind of ways we can connect to further this work in the church and beyond.

That is the whole point of this stuff.

The saving the wetlands stuff is important. The ministering to the sweet people of Bayou Blue is important. The intentional community is important. The exploring the incredible city of New Orleans and so much of South Louisiana and learning as much as I could and doing as much as I could is important.

But furthering the church-- I think that's the whole point of this year of service. I'm so glad I could take part in it.

Today, I fell through the flotant marsh.

My week of flora fieldwork continued today, with vegetation monitoring along Bayou Segnette in the Jean Lafitte Barataria Preserve (my favorite park I've found).


View Larger Map





We were measuring bald cypress trees that were planted 1-3 years ago, and assessing their health. For the most part, they're looking good! This involved hiking through a spoil bank (basically the sides of the waterway that are built up with the stuff that gets dredged to keep the waterway clear), which was very dense with brambles and trees, and into the marsh, which had several inches of standing water.

I usually try to find out the landscape before I go out to do fieldwork, so I can make well-informed choices about my footwear. Anyone who knows me at all knows I'm not the kind of person who has a million pairs of shoes, but I do have several kinds of boots and outdoor/work footwear. With me in Louisiana, I have an old pair of awesome trail running shoes that serve as my water planting shoes; I have my yellow knee boots; I have my epic hiking boots; and a pair of cleaner, newer sneakers mostly reserved for doing active things that don't involve the wetlands.

Last time I planted in the Barataria Preserve, the ground was fairly high and dry, but after some thought about the recent rains and high water, I decided on knee boots. I was thankful that I did. Once past the spoil bank, there was several inches of standing water in the marsh.



Just before lunch, I discovered the hard way that it was a floating marsh, which is called flotant here. How did I discover this, you might ask?

I fell through it.

One misstep, and down I went. I was stuck in the mud up to my chest, with water up to my shoulders. I had an instantaneous moment in which I thought that I should be claustrophobic or scared or something, but it passed immediately and I focused on getting my legs out WITH my boots. I was certain I had lost one, but I managed to get myself and my wellies out. I had noticed all morning that the ground was shaking beneath our feet whenever a big, loud boat went by. I mean, they do call it trembling prairie.



I have entertained the idea of acquiring hip waders for some time, but most of the field work I do here is shallow enough for knee boots or in water so high that hip waders can't help me. I guess today it didn't really matter what footwear I chose anyway.

taking flight

I want to tell you about my flight in a Cessna at the end of March. Bayou Blue hosted a group from the Presbyterian Hunger Program to talk about some of the environmental and food issues faced by South Louisiana. We had a great visit with some really wonderful national staff of PC(USA). They came to my little bayou church, and then we were off to the local airport in Houma for a tour of the wetlands by air.

I had never been in a small plane before, much less had I taken an air tour of the disappearing wetlands. It was really difficult to see the coast in such rough shape. During Paddle Bayou Lafourche I learned that coastal erosion has slowed down, but only because the easiest land to erode is already gone.


Nature does not make straight lines. Those oil and gas exploration and pipeline canals invite salt water intrusion and quick erosion. Louisiana is terrible at enforcing environmental regulations. The companies are required to fill in or plug those canals when they are done. They don't.


You can see where the pipelines were, and what it did to the landscape. This used to all be wetlands, not open water. This was really hard to see.


We passed over some healthy swamp at the end, which was a little bit encouraging, but also really tough to see the incredible contrast between what is thriving and what is gone.

After we were all back on the ground, we traveled to Pointe-au-Chenes to see some of the problems from the water with my favorite wetlands hosts, Donald and Theresa of the Pointe-au-Chien tribe. We went out on their boat, not even too far from the little strip of town that's left. I've been meaning to share these two images with you for a while--





You can see the same tree from slightly different angles, but about a year and a half of erosion completely removed that tree from being on solid land. That's not high tide in the lower picture. That land is gone. It's open water.

Coastal erosion and wetlands degradation is frightening in South Louisiana. I'm really glad that I can be a small part of continuing to share that story.

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Paddle Bayou Lafourche

I just got back from my first overnight canoe trip since 2007. OH MAN IT WAS AWESOME. My friend Lindsey joined me for a really great long weekend on the bayou. We paddled 52 miles over 4 days through people's back yards, enjoying local food, conversation, flora, fauna, and music. 

Paddle Bayou Lafourche is an annual event put on by the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, a great organization that I have enjoyed many good resources from this year as I learn and teach about wetlands issues in the region. National Estuary Programs came out of the EPA's Clean Water Act in the late 80s. At home in New Jersey is another one-- Barnegat Bay Partnership.

Thursday, from Donaldsonville to Napoleonville: It was a tough first day. Paddling down the bayou on a windy day is much like paddling in a wind tunnel... in the wrong direction. We faced gusts up to 20mph. I hadn't been in a canoe in almost seven years, so my arms were a bit out of practice to begin with, but this was rough for everyone. We paddled almost 18 miles, about 11.5 of which were before lunch. We felt a little hopeless, but we did it, and enjoyed a good dinner and glorious night of camping at Madewood Plantation.

Friday, Napoleonville to Thibodaux: The wind died down, but the forecast remained questionable. We lucked out with only a little bit of rain on and off as we continued to explore the bayou. We landed at the Jean Lafitte museum in town, having done just shy of 16 miles.

Saturday, Thibodaux to Raceland: We launched from Nicholls State University, just below Jean Lafitte, because there's a weir in the bayou between the two and the BTNEP staff probably didn't want to deal with all of the idiots who would have tried to paddle down it. Lindsey and I finally got into a rhythm, finishing ahead of a lot of people who doubted we would survive the first day. We also finished just a few minutes ahead of torrential downpour and hail. Right before we landed after about 15.5 miles, Lindsey decided to follow through with a wild idea she came up with early in the day-- yoga on the bayou, or "bayoga" as we came to call it. She decided to do a headstand while I balanced the canoe:





Sunday, Raceland to Lockport: Just a short 5.5 miles to finish up. BTNEP's Water Quality Coordinator, Andrew, was without a paddling partner for the last day and asked to join us. Lindsey enjoyed sitting in a chair in the middle of the canoe asking lots of questions about the bayou. We had paddled beside him and his canoe partner Michael, BTNEP's Invasive Species Coordinator, the three days before, peppering them with questions about soil science and ecology, so it was cool to have him on board answering our environmental questions the entire time without worrying about keeping up with him.



The day started off very foggy, but we once again beat the rain after a late decision to follow through with the final stretch at all. The trip ends in Lockport, because any further south and we'd start running into enormous ships. Just before we landed, I had Andrew balance the canoe while Lindsey took a picture of my bayoga efforts (obviously going for a tree):




It was so nice to go out on an adventure for a few days. This was technically work-related for me, so I did spend some time contemplating Bayou Lafourche, which is the main source of drinking water for the region--

• A few weeks ago, BTNEP hosted a massive bayou cleanup, which usually involves hundreds of volunteers along 106 miles of Bayou Lafourche (we only paddled 52 miles). They pick up thousands of pieces of garbage ranging from cigarette butts (please please please stop throwing cigarette butts out the windows) to plastic bottles (please please please recycle those and/or stop drinking bottled water when it's totally unnecessary) to tires, toilets, and couches. Full frightening details from last year here. I will say it again: this is the main source of drinking water for the region, for tens of thousands of people.
• The first day, as we paddled straight into 20mph gusts, it was all too clear a picture of how easily salt water flows back up the bayous in nothing more than a stiff wind. When the wind wasn't blowing, the water was completely slack. No current. Tough to paddle, but also tough for it to remain fresh, flowing off the Mississippi at Donaldsonville.
• As we paddled under local bridges, cars drove over our heads. Some of the bridges were grates. As I felt the rainwater drip off one onto my legs and head, I shuddered at the thought of leaky cars just letting fluids straight into... the drinking water supply.
• We wound past countless signs warning of gas and oil pipeline crossings. Again... slow leaks into the drinking water, distinctly possible.

Plus, let's consider the greater watershed with the help of the Department of the Interior's Streamer Tool. Here's the portion of Bayou Lafourche that we paddled:


And here is the watershed of the Mississippi River, down to Bayou Lafourche:


That's 31 states, plus two Canadian provinces, full of agricultural runoff, fluids from leaky beat up cars, cigarette butts from careless people, and other awful things.

I would really encourage you to think about your relationship with your home watershed, whatever it may be. Water is so precious.

I did not spend the entire trip having nightmares, but the whole awareness angle that BTNEP is playing by hosting this event on this particular bayou definitely worked. The vast majority of it was relaxing and wonderful. There were at least six different kinds of bread pudding served over the course of the trip. There was a man sitting on his fishing dock playing his accordion for the paddlers. There was bayoga and shenanigans with Lindsey and other people around us. There were blooming black locust trees, and swaying cutgrass, ducks and geese and swallows and red winged blackbirds, and lots of people waving hello and speaking French and smiling and many, many other beautiful things.

busy weekend

ON FRIDAY, I planted trees for the first time in 2014! It was a cool morning but warmed up nicely, and it was so so wonderful to get outside after a chilly week that included two very cooped up "sneaux days". (Hint: it didn't actually snow.)

The site was as the back of my favorite park that I've found in Louisiana so far, one of the Jean Lafitte National Park sites (there are six in the state), the Barataria Preserve. We took a short boat ride to the site, way at the back of the park. The land is actually owned by the school districts of two parishes, Jefferson and St. Charles. The districts lease the land to hunters to raise money for the schools. We put over 300 bald cypress trees in the ground to help fight the invasive Chinese Tallow tree. After the cypress trees have a while to take hold, a team will go back and kill the tallow trees, which are disrupting the ecosystem there.


a hunting blind on the flotat; we planted along a ridge between the flotat and the bayou

ON SATURDAY, I took a few friends on an adventure to Baton Rouge to try on wedding dresses. There was a store there that also has a branch in New Jersey, which will make it much easier logistically if I found something I liked. Three of my housemates (Anna Leigh, Alyssa and Hannah) and my friend from the Episcopal version of YAV (Lindsey) all came along for the ride, promising snarky and silly commentary and help. I tried on a few ridiculous gowns that are nothing at all like me, just for laughs, but we did eventually narrow it down to a likely contender. Then we all tried on funny dresses just because.


Many thanks to Anna Leigh, Hannah, Alyssa and Lindsey for help and laughter

ON SUNDAY,  I woke up early and traveled to Bayou Blue for church, and then to Morgan City for another church service which I was leading. I preached about environmental justice. It went pretty well. The church has a Confederate fort on its grounds. I explored town a little bit afterward. It was very quiet and empty, and reminded me a lot of different rust belt towns I've visited before. There was a lot of truck traffic, which makes sense for it being a pretty busy port, but hardly anyone else walking or driving down the streets.

It was a very foggy, humid morning along the Atchafalaya River. My first time seeing it! And the little red lighthouse across the river in Berwick.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

I was feeling a little run down last night, so I decided to curl up in my bed early with my laptop and watch a movie. I had just received a copy of Beasts of the Southern Wild, which I finally ordered last week after hearing about it for the dozenth or so time while working down the bayou. I had only heard criticism from the communities I've been working with, so I watched the movie with a pretty steep bias.

Ok, this is the part where I'm going to start discussing the film with reckless abandon, so if you are highly offended by spoilers and haven't seen it, go away (for now, I hope you'll come back another time to talk about this and other things). If you haven't seen it, I'd be more than happy to lend you my copy. Just send me your address.

Here, I'll stick a map in here so you don't have to see more words if you don't want to:


View Larger Map

So that long, skinny northeast-southwest line is the road to Isle de Jean Charles (the northish-southish oriented thing at the southwestern end of the road), one of the communities I'm working with through the First People's Conservation Council. It has recently been rebuilt, but it's still just a narrow two lane road with no kind of buffer on either side of it to protect it from high or rough water. (In fact, there was a temporary road put on the southern side of it, that is being removed-- why? Why spend the extra time and money to remove something that might potentially help? Sigh, bureaucracy.) And there is definitely plenty of water there, since various levees and flood walls have completely destroyed the wetlands as well as the island itself. Pointe-aux-Chenes, which I've mentioned once or twice, is what the road connects Isle de Jean Charles to. (And Montegut, just north of Pointe-aux-Chenes, is where the movie was filmed.)

Isle de Jean Charles is the place that bayou village Charles Doucet, which its citizens call The Bathtub, is based on. And while I think the movie did an adequate job of capturing the some of the joy and camaraderie that exists in little bayou camps, I could immediately see why the people of these real-life communities take exception to the movie's portrayal of them. The people of The Bathtub live in absolute squalor.

There were a lot of things I liked about the movie. For one, it's just beautifully filmed-- yes, literally filmed in a world where most major movies are made digitally. I like that the actors and actresses were mostly, if not all, from south Louisiana (and for many, this was their first time acting).

There's sort of this whimsical, mystical take on climate change, the melting ice caps, and the destruction of the bayou, and the main character, Hushpuppy, says a lot of things about the interconnectedness of the universe. "The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right."


I liked the honesty of the very sad, difficult, complicated story line of the storm's aftermath: this community trying to fend for itself by building a floating camp and blowing up the levee that was keeping their village under water; the fact that the mandatory evacuation enforced several weeks after the hurricane, with emphasis on the "force" part of "enforced"; the one way bus tickets issued to miscellaneous towns around the US. The storm in question wasn't called Katrina, but certainly carried a lot of her baggage.

I liked the inclusion of salt water intrusion, a subtle nod to the very real environmental problems of this region. "Two weeks later, everything started to die." Here's my picture from September of trees killed off by salt water in that neck of the bayou:


There was a lot about this movie that gave me mixed feelings. Like I said, the film portrays bayou camp dwellers as living in filth. I don't think that was especially true to real life, nor do I think it was relevant to the story. I'm sure there are some people who live in run down places amidst random junk, far beyond the grid, but that's not the norm. I've been in some homes that have an eclectic collection of things, but none of them have been so dirty.

I was also frustrated by the idea of the freedom of poverty. I don't think it was especially realistic. Yes, there is certainly some freedom for a culture that is not bound by bank accounts, but I suspect there are way more challenges than benefits (oh hey, super timely article "It Is Expensive to Be Poor"!). I'm not quite sure how Wink gets to the hospital, and back. And what about food? There are plenty of scenes that involve eating, whole chickens put on grills, plentiful seafood, hot peppers growing on the floating camp... in one scene, Hushpuppy is shown munching on some leaf. What about when the wetlands are killed by pollution or salt water? How did they get fresh water? What about oil? The BP Horizon disaster happened when this movie was being filmed. All kinds of environmental problems contribute to challenging food security. When you don't have a bank account, you can't just go buy what you can't catch.

The end scene with the community walking down the road to The Bathtub, which is the actual road to Isle de Jean Charles, and the waves splashing up across it... eerie. And so real. It doesn't even take a storm, just a stiff wind or a full moon. These are communities just about ready to fall off the earth, and with practically no attention or sympathy. I mean, in the movie, the authorities didn't notice the people still in The Bathtub until after they blew up a levee to let the water out. It took a literal explosion for anyone to check on them. That was probably relatively close to reality, because as it is, there is little to no local, state or federal government assistance for these precious places, or the people in them.

I guess that's where other people step in, take exception to an otherwise beautiful movie, and try their best to raise some awareness and get some help to these communities. There's a lot of good going on down here, but it seems there are infinite challenges for each positive step taken. I know I am barely scratching the surface. But, Hushpuppy said it, late in the film, "I see that I'm a little piece of a big, big universe. And that makes things right."

Grand Bayou

This past Monday, I visited my first water bound community in Louisiana, meaning, there aren't roads or paths between the houses-- just water and trembling prairie. There is one road that ends at one family's house, by the old school house, and that's it. They use boats to get around the neighborhood.


View Larger Map

I was in Grand Bayou for another session with the group I met with in Pointe-aux-Chenes, the Mobile Farm Market. This is one of the kindest communities I've worked with yet. I was welcomed warmly into the home of people I hadn't met before. The chief of Grand Bayou was recovering from a cold, and also doesn't do cold weather, so I didn't see her. She and I have been in contact though, and she has a lot of great conservation ideas for her community that I'm hoping to help with.





The community felt very peaceful despite the frigid, high winds. I'm looking forward to exploring more beyond the end of the road, but it was definitely not a good day for a boat ride.

Aside from the one home, there was an old schoolhouse at the end of the road. It was wrecked by Katrina. It still stands empty.


Another thing I found interesting was these raised garden beds that people were talking about. It turns out, the community couldn't get funding or approval to build up levees, but could get funding AND approval to create raised garden beds. So they have some very tall garden beds that they're trying to figure out what to do with.

Grand Bayou is a quiet, friendly place. I'm really looking forward to working with this community this spring.

the frozen tundra of South Louisiana

I hope wherever you are reading this from, you are keeping warm.


(from here)

This weather feels like January to me. I don't mind wearing a sweater and a scarf. That being said, I realize South Louisiana is absolutely not built for this.

We have been running our faucets as per our landlord's instructions for 30+ hours as of my writing this (the temperature never broke freezing here today). It's not even the sound of the running water that gets to me... you can imagine how this conservationist feels about it, especially in a region where salt water intrusion is such a threat to the water supply! But these homes were built with exposed pipes and very little insulation, and there have been reports of burst pipes all over New Orleans today.

The bayou is in the midst of citrus season, but likely lost the vast majority of their grapefruits, oranges and lemons in these two days of deep freeze. Folks were encouraged to pick fruit on Sunday, but you can only eat and share so much fruit at a time, and not everyone is able to pick too much themselves. This month's YAV service project was to glean in Bayou Blue on the 18th, to share with the community and local food  banks. Instead, it's looking like we'll be picking rotten fruit to keep the trees in production for next year.


As I drove across town to give a presentation last night, I saw a few people on some of the neutral grounds (the grassy median in the middle of most major streets), curled up under modest blankets. I heard there were several emergency cold weather shelters around the city, but clearly some of them didn't get the message. I hope they found out before too long and were able to get there.

I know South Louisiana doesn't have it that bad with lows in the upper 20s. I have my sweet winter coat and a Saints hat that I got for Mike when he was here for Thanksgiving (he didn't think he'd need it in the desert!). But thinking about the local context, the upper 20s are just as bad here as the single digits are at home in New Jersey and the sub-zero temperatures are elsewhere.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's predicted high of 48 and finally turning off the water in this house!

out of the fog

It's hard to remember that it's December when it's still pretty consistently warm enough for t-shirts. I mean, it only just became fall, like yesterday, when a cold front dropped the temperature by 40 degrees and dropped about 1/4 of the cypress leaves:


At home, I usually have my Christmas concert to snap me out of November mode (I love Thanksgiving!), but the weather and the fact that my work has been quiet for the past week or so has really kept me in this foggy bubble with little regard for the upcoming holidays.

Then it was actually really foggy this morning out in bayou land. Visibility approximately 50 feet:


And this at 11:30 or so was a vast improvement over the conditions when I drove out to Bayou Blue before 8AM. 

I decided to combat this oblivious aloofness by listening to Christmas music all day. I'm not usually one for songs about Santa, but this one added a little boogie to my ride home from the bayou and a little Advent into my heart:



Wishing you and your loved ones peace and joy this Christmas season.

success!

I don't write nearly often enough about my adventures as a NRCS Earth Team Volunteer. It's been a phenomenal experience, and I love love love it. It's pretty awesome that my position as a YAV allows me to keep volunteering with them, as part of my work but also in my free time when I can find it.

Today's adventure was especially poignant. The landscape we were investigating had such a great story to tell.


We (two NRCS employees, a Fish and Wildlife employee, and me) took an airboat out into Bayou Sauvage to monitor some vegetation, aka check on a few grass plantings that happened about three months ago. These are not plantings I did, but it's exciting to know that this is what some of my plantings might accomplish. But first, we look backwards--


Bayou Sauvage used to be a lot of cypress swamp. That cypress swamp in particular was heavily harvested to build New Orleans... two or more centuries ago. The stumps are still all over the place. Many have sunken, but the ground was a lot more solid at this particular stop, and there were stumps and knees sticking up everywhere. Even in an airboat, it was tough to get through here.


After many years of logging and then lots of other human activities (development of levees and canals that change hydrologic patterns, among other shady business... humans are the worst), this area became open water. Tons of erosion happened, and expanded out from there to create a lot of other islands and open water areas where there once was good healthy swampland.

Something humans have done to try to fix this problem is use recycled Christmas trees to help catch sediments, reduce erosion and rebuild marshes. It took some trial and error-- there were a few busted up old cribs nearby from a less successful iteration of the project, but now trees are bundled together and airlifted by helicopter. And it's working! The circles show piles of dead Christmas trees that were laid down in the water here. The arrow points to an area that you can't even see the old trees, because the grasses have taken over successfully after enough sediment built up to sustain the ecosystem.


And finally, back to the present. These grasses were planted about three months ago. Grasses are one of the first steps to protecting an area from erosion and building it back up, first into health marshes, which can later progress into healthy swamps*. Here, people planted bullrushes in particular, but I've been planting cord grass and there's this other horrific sounding thing called cut grass that sometimes gets used (called such because it has sharp edges and will cut you). They've taken like little champs, anchoring soil, helping catch more soil and expand the area, creating more habitat for migratory birds and a healthier ecosystem now and to come. It's so exciting to see the progress in such a short time, and to know that I have done this to places. There are places in southern Louisiana that will probably hopefully be just as successful in the coming months and years. That is really, really exciting to know.


Watch out world. I'm coming to conservation you. Just as soon as my hands get warm. It was surprisingly chilly for south Louisiana. Everyone was complaining but I was having a blast wearing a hoodie AND a windbreaker!


*Fun fact! The difference between marshes and swamps: marsh implies grassy wetlands, swamp implies forested wetlands.

faith and hope and satsumas

Today's sermon at Bayou Blue was basically, "Have hope, but get up off your you know what and do something."

I'm pretty good at getting off my butt most of the time. I've planted dozens of trees and hundreds of plugs of cord grass, sat in on countless meetings for countless organizations (which ok, involved sitting on my butt, but I had to get up to get there), hiked all over southern Louisiana to learn about this place, and in my spare time, do absurd things like the Color Run (even though my housemates and I walked the whole thing).

Last week was definitely a big exception. Aside from the literal difficulties of getting off my ass these days, there was also the great frustration of e v e r y  s i n g l e  p l a n  I'd made for work for the week falling through. All of them. Every day. On Thursday I went to Houma and Thibodaux to visit museums. On Friday I visited the branch of Jean Lafitte National Park in the French Quarter. I read a lot. I still fell short on hours (thank goodness I'd built up a good supply of surplus over the past few months, because I basically shot it all last week).

And what about life in general? There's the more figurative get off my butt and do something... like get a job. It's not that I haven't tried-- I've applied to literally over 175 positions in my field since graduating from college more than five years ago, most of which had multiple openings/locations. That doesn't include the countless jobs I applied to that don't involve my beloved geography degrees. That's so much rejection. The worst of it came a few weeks ago when I didn't get my ideal job at home in NJ. Even 300 volunteer hours, a personal recommendation, and a home field advantage can't help me.

Frustrating. But: have hope. Thankfully, I am doing something I enjoy right now, at least, when my plans don't all evaporate and I actually have things to do. And ultimately, this long string of not getting any jobs I've applied for except Target during the holiday season (ugh) lead me to said something I enjoy. Also thankfully: I never received the official rejection note, rather, a very kind and encouraging email from the wonderful soils mentor who let me dig all of those holes in the past year and got me correcting all of you when you call it "dirt". And, I suppose, I should be thankful that I didn't have to face any difficult decisions or hard goodbyes prematurely.

After church this morning, this sweet Cajun man was talking about shooting a possum that was destroying his satsuma tree (for those of you outside of southern Louisiana, satsumas are these wonderful clementine-like oranges, slightly more tart perhaps). I mentioned that my housemates and I love satsumas. So he drove home right then, and returned ten minutes later with a big bag FULL of them, fresh and ripe and sweet and wonderful. I may or may not have had about a half dozen of them today, and there are still several dozen left.

It's the little things that keep me motivated and remind me to remain hopeful. I'm still getting good experience in my field here, and I'm getting delicious citrus on top of it (you know, and the general support of a great community). I have no idea what's next for Mike and me, where we will be or what we will be doing, but I'm in a pretty safe position in the meantime. So I'll keep hoping, and I'll keep getting off my butt as best and as much as I can.

House.

My mom left this morning after a wonderful, whirlwind three day visit. We wandered around the French Quarter, took a trip out to New Orleans East to see Bayou Sauvage, tried on wedding dresses, ate lots of southern Louisiana food (including vegetarian jambalaya (!!!) for me and a lot of different seafood for her), and volunteered at Program of Hope.

We also thoroughly enjoyed the music and legacy of Professor Longhair. (!!!!!) I discovered his music in college-- better late than never. A friend put "Big Chief" on a mix for my birthday one year, and I have walked this earth nearly every day since with that piano riff stuck in my head.



Mom discovered his music on Thursday night when I took her to Fess Fest at Tipitina's, featuring Hugh Laurie and Joe Jackson and many other very, very talented individuals (including a group of high school students with some serious chops). Better later than neverer!


"There are at least 100 people in this room and 10,000 in this city who can do this better than me. Well, *!@# 'em. I got here first." -Hugh Laurie

Seriously, amazing concert. Every musician, every song was just awesome. It's a little disorienting at first to hear Hugh Laurie speak with his native English accent rather than his very well faked-for-TV New Jersey one, but he is a fantastic host and a talented musician. It was very clear to the room that for him, playing Fess's music at Tipitina's was a boyhood dream realized. I love seeing musicians who are just elated to be playing.

Something else cool about the concert: proceeds went to the Tipitina's Foundation, which supports the preservation of Louisiana's incredible music culture. They run a lot of education programs for youth, but they're also partnered with Project Homecoming, where three of my housemates work, to restore the house that Fess lived in, where his daughter and grandson were living until Katrina wrecked it. By this spring, they'll be back in the house, with some renovated space to live in, some renovated space to rent out and some renovated space to serve as a Fess museum. I'm really excited about that this will all be completed while I'm still in New Orleans to see it.

In the meantime, Mom and I decided to go see it as it is now, especially because my housemate Anna Leigh is one of the people working on the house, and could stop and give us a tour. It's coming along great, and they were able to save and refurbish some of the original pieces, including a few windows and the brickwork of the fireplaces. Touring everyone else's job placements the first day I was in New Orleans, I saw a big mantle and his front door sitting in storage over at the Project Homecoming headquarters, waiting to be fixed up and put back where they belong. Kind of cool.





It's exciting to see things being rebuilt. It's also really exciting to take part in it in some small way (so selfless, buying that ticket to hear Hugh Laurie play Professor Longhair's song. What a sacrifice.). (I'm hoping to go in with Anna Leigh sometime soon and lend a hand on one of my days off, too.) It's very cool to see the full circle of things.

This isn't from Tipitina's this week, but it'll do:

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Something tells me that if Grandma Day sees this, she'll tell me I'm playing with my hair too much, but it was a beautiful breezy morning down by the Mississippi River!

Presenting...

today's adventure: my first presentation!

I got to spend my evening with people from Brigantine, NJ (woo hoo practically my people!) and Murrysville, PA who are currently staying and working in New Orleans with Project Homecoming. One of the houses they are currently working on, under the good supervision of one of my housemates, Anna Leigh, is the home of Professor Longhair. I think that is spectacular. (One of the goals of Project Homecoming is to rebuild communities, not just houses, and what better way to help the community but fix up one of their hometown heroes' homes? Also I think his daughter was still living there before it got beat up by Katrina.)


Now that you have some great background music...

I was worried about the presentation because 1. I am excited about and interested in just about everything, so it's hard to decide what's actually important and interesting for other people who live outside of my brain; 2. It is difficult to convey the dire environmental crisis happening in southern Louisiana's wetlands by walking through a relatively healthy marsh just outside of New Orleans. We talked about how these landforms are made, why they matter, and why they are falling apart. Those were the main points I wanted to cover, and I talked about them all, so I feel ok about it.

I received some good feedback though, so it went all right. I was even able to answer almost all of the questions! Except for this one: how big is the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico (the area in which nothing can grow or live because of all of the pollution that accumulates at the bottom of the enormous Mississippi River watershed)? Which I am now reading up on... it's awful. It varies throughout the year, but averages between the size of the state of Connecticut and the state of New Jersey.

...

That's a terrible note to end on. But a few more people understand what's going on down here, and at the end of our walk at Bayou Sauvage, there were a few alligators hanging out in the canal, so everyone came away pretty excited. I was talking to people about birds by then, but I'll try to get pictures next time.

Tomorrow's adventure: traveling south with NRCS to plant trees! Along bayous! In the water?
 
This was the picture they sent me when I asked about appropriate attire for such field work, not realizing we would not be working on solid ground...

Bayou Sauvage

I've never had a particularly meaningful relationship with birds. I mean, they're cool, and I like hearing them in the background, but I prefer to walk around with my Field Guide to North American Trees book because they stay still while I identify them.

I remember one time several years ago going to the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge down near Atlantic City with Mike. It was well before we were dating, and he just wanted to go take pictures of birds. It was a gray, drizzly fall morning, and I was happy to go along for the ride and get some fresh air down in the wetlands and not really pay any attention to the birds. I learned that day that Mike knows a lot about birds, and I have subsequently directed about 97% of all bird questions and comments to him ever since.

Fast forward a few years till Mike, Katie and I were driving from Irwin, PA to Walpole Island, ON last summer. We stopped at some sort of wildlife or bird refuge in Ohio, on Lake Erie. There was a bird watching room in the visitors' center, with a big window overlooking a little area with a village of bird houses and feeders. There were a lot of birds. It was rather noisy. So I was testing Mike--

"What kind of bird is that?" Red winged black bird.

"What kind of bird is that?" Some sort of finch.

"What kind of bird is that?" Red winged black bird.

"No, the one with the yellow on its wing." Red winged black bird.

"No, the one with yellow on its wing." Red winged black bird.




So that about sums up my relationship with birds.

Yesterday I traveled east to Bayou Sauvage, just to look around and get familiar with the park. I'm giving my first presentation next week to a group of volunteers visiting New Orleans with Project Homecoming, where several of my roommates work, and I was asked that when weather permits, to actually bring the groups to the wetlands. I think that's a lovely idea, especially since Bayou Sauvage is only about 15 minutes away from where the volunteers stay during their time of service. I was met by a professor from UNO who knows a lot about the area. It was great to have a guide.


The park is really nice. There are a few different places to park and hike, with well maintained boardwalks through the wetlands and paths along the levees. I'm a little intimidated by the size of the group (next week's is about 30 people, but in the future it could be up to 90)-- mostly worried whether or not I'll be able to really present anything to such a large contingent out in the field effectively. But I'm excited to show them the actual environment I'm talking about.

Bayou Sauvage was hit hard by Katrina, taking out a lot of older cypress and live oak trees, but it's a pretty healthy ecosystem. There have been various planting and mulching projects, among other conservation efforts, but really, nature will heal itself over time if we just leave it alone. Say it with me-- humans are the worst! But it is in pretty good shape, and is a really good look at that healing process.

Before leaving the refuge, the professor and I stopped by another trail area that's actually an impressive bird rookery. I was amazed at how many birds we saw just from this one little stretch of boardwalk. Some of them looked familiar, like things I've seen in the wetlands at home-- little herons and egrets, some sand piper kind of things (again, you can see how good I am at birding).

Apparently the place will be full of birds in November and December as they migrate every which way (you know, or south). I might need to investigate. There's a train line that runs along the back edge of the refuge, and a freight train passed through as I was leaving yesterday. Watching all of the birds jump up and circle before realizing it was just a harmless train was pretty incredible. This was the first time I really recognized the diversity and beauty of birds. Doesn't mean I'm going to learn how to identify them, because they still move too fast for me, but it was just a really beautiful moment that this blog entry isn't going to do justice, so I'm going to stop trying to describe it now.

Barataria and Jean Lafitte

I'm pretty sure "Jean Lafitte" is the most French sounding thing I can currently say, although I did learn a new French word yesterday in writing (I don't know how it's pronounced)-- coquille, which  means seashell (the first people used to build mounds out of broken shells, and there are a few places in the area that still bear this name).

Jean Lafitte was a pirate in Barataria Bay in the late 1700s/early 1800s, who helped Jackson win the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, using smuggled goods and the knowledge of the pending British attack (they tried to bribe him to help them... ha).

I spent the past two days in the town Jean Lafitte meeting with groups from the Christian Community Development Association. Members are from all over the US and Canada and are currently having their annual conference in New Orleans. The trip to Jean Lafitte to talk about the wetlands with Kris, Dick, the town mayor (and me?) was one of many options they had as side trips. From what I gathered, it was not most people's first choice, but I would say the vast majority were happy they ended up with us touring the wetlands.

Except for the man yesterday who interrupted us mid-discussion to ask when we were going on the boat, because he didn't come for a political discussion...

But everyone else was interested and engaged and excited to see the cypress swamp and hear the stories. And then there is this little guy--



 

Jean Lafitte is a pretty cool town, with a really great mayor who is working hard not only for his residents, but the residents of four other nearby, unincorporated towns. Has fought for funding for structures to protect the town, even when the government keeps telling them they are not worth it. He secured funding for an affordable healthcare clinic that is also studying and caring for the long term effects of the oil disaster. He won a grant to build a beautiful library, senior center, and meeting facility with a small museum attached in an effort to prove to the state and country that his town is "worth it". Members of his family have served the role of justice of the peace for over a century, for free, just so the town would have services.



Nothing like spending a beautiful day advocating wetlands and meeting an actual honest politician to give you a little hope.

Maps (they don't love you like I love you)

Here is the story of how I got my first map of Louisiana.
(hypothetical subtitle: Maps! A multi-media love story)



(I don't necessarily understand the song or the video, but I like it. They don't love you like I love you, maps.)

On Friday, my drive to Bayou Blue was interrupted by a sheriff's officer directing traffic off the main highway. Having already made the drive, I knew where I was supposed to be going, and I don't have or use a GPS anyway (1. I am stubborn about technology, and in this case will use my degrees in geography as my excuse; 2. I like to pretend I am smarter than the GPS; 3. I hate that some people blindly follow the GPS machine without even consulting maps or using their brains; 4. I like maps; 5. I think I get a better idea of the area and learn how to get places better by studying maps and writing out directions by hand; 6. GPS machines aren't known to be entirely effective in many rural places still (see here); 6. etc. etc. etc.).

This is roughly the drive from my neighborhood to Bayou Blue (which is officially Gray, according to most Geographic Information Systems):

View Larger Map

I was directed off Route 90 about 15 miles before my exit. I have no idea why and haven't been able to find out why in the news. The road behind the officer was empty, no sign of an accident or anything, just one other car from the sheriff's department parked down the road, lights flashing. I exit the highway with a long line of cars*, surrounded by sugarcane fields, and I have no idea where I am. So I'm creeping along slowly, figuring, since I'm stuck in traffic going 6 MPH or less with so many other cars, surely I will find my way back to the highway.

Nope.

The traffic sat on the one road in a town I eventually identified as Raceland (thank you, water tower). When we got to the end of the road an hour later, there was another officer, directing traffic, but not in any particular direction. Some cars went left! Some went right! And because the road through the town kind of curved and I had no idea where I was, I didn't know which way to go to get back to the highway. I went left, figuring I was north of the highway, and had been heading west-ish last I could tell. No one else was going left though.

By this point, after drinking a travel mug full of tea and a full liter Nalgene bottle of water, I also really needed to make a pit stop. I pulled over at the first place I found, a nursing home with a few residents sitting on the porch who gave me the code to the door (apparently I did not find the front door, because I also had to go exploring to find a desk). A kind woman behind the desk let me use the employee bathroom and gave me some directions that she wasn't too confident in. I'm not sure she's ever been outside of Raceland.

This is the second time in Louisiana I've had to stop and ask for directions (oddly enough, both times at nursing homes because that was all I could find, but those are the only two nursing homes I've seen). The first time was trying to find the new NRCS field office in Luling, because Google Maps told me to take roads that don't yet exist. I learned from this that I need to ask humans for directions and take any electronic routes with a grain of salt (or cane sugar, perhaps).

So the Raceland woman's directions weren't especially clear or helpful, so I kept going the way that made the most sense according to my rough mental map. Lo and behold, I found Route 90! But after sitting for an hour on a not-so-straight road in the middle of nothing but sugarcane and oil pipelines, I had no idea how far I'd gone.

By some great stroke of grace, there was a tourist information center right next to the highway entrance.

The even nicer lady in the LaFourche ("la-foosh", see, my French is improving?) Parish Tourist Information Center was very happy to give me free maps of the town, parish and state. I was just a few miles east of Bayou Blue, and Route 90 was open from that point west. I arrived less than 20 minutes later, and was still able to squeeze in a visit to BTNEP ("bit-nep", not French), the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, another organization I'll be partnering with in my work here.

Barataria is the name of a bay further south, and Terrebonne is the Parish where Bayou Blue and many of the first people I'm working with are located. Look! My Geography of Louisiana is improving, too! I met Kerry, the program director, and when I said something off handed about liking estuaries and having grown up near an big one in New Jersey, he answered, "Oh, Barnegat Bay." I think I will like working with his program.

And now I have some maps, too. I do like maps.

*To further the multi-media experience, Long Line of Cars by Cake is another song I rather enjoy, but there's not an official video for it, nor could I find one I liked enough to post on my blog, but I would encourage you to give a listen.

French, s'il vous plait

On this lovely 90 degree, 90% humidity Labor Day, two of my housemates and I wandered about the French Quarter for a few hours. It was nice to see a little more of the city and enjoy our last day before we all start our jobs.

I've had an interesting time observing French from the moment I crossed the state line from Mississippi on I-59. I'm fairly confident in my complete inability to pronounce anything even vaguely French. I had my spelling corrected approximately 23957 times in the meeting last Friday (ok, just twice, after I wrote down my fifth iteration of the town "Thibodaux"-- Tibido, Tibideaux, Tibideau, Tibidaux, Tibi~~~ (squiggly lines ensued), and after I noticed a specific local forestry term written down on one of the papers being passed around the room). Thankfully, one of the good things that came out of the infamous Peace Corps debacle was plenty of free online French language lessons and resources. Also, I hear there are lessons at my local library. One of my goals for the year: learn enough French that I can at least write things down correctly, or closer to correctly. I'll know I have truly succeeded in this if I can also pronounce street names and business names without the preface, "I know I'm about to embarrass myself..."

I heard a lot more French being spoken in the French Quarter than I expected, oddly enough. People have reassured me over and over that I'll be fine without a background in French or Romance languages (nine years of German and a year of Mandarin? Surprisingly not useful!), but I'm pretty sure I've heard it every day so far. I definitely heard it more on my trips outside of the city, weaving its way into and out of conversations between people whose families have lived in the area for generations.

I guess I was vaguely aware that the French here are related to the French in eastern Canada and northern Maine. This weekend, while down in Bayou Blue, it was pointed out that "Cajun" is a sort of bastardization of "Acadian". It all kind of clicked and I started to think about all of the beautiful things I saw last summer when I drove across eastern Canada with Jamie, Amanda and Katie. The stop signs may not say Arête, but the language is still very present here.

Cajuns were exiled from eastern Canada for failure to pledge allegiance to Britain. They kind of wandered south until they were left alone, settling on the bayou and adapting their culture to the local environment. (This is as opposed to Creole, which are people of France French heritage and sometimes Spanish and Italian.) They invented all sorts of wonderful foods and Zydeco music.

So anyway, French Quarter. It's very touristy, so my lack of French skills was not actually a hindrance. Hannah, Jess and I wandered around the market, checking out local crafts and the myriad of masks, beads and voo doo dolls. We had lunch at Mothers, a legendary po'boy shop where even the cabbage had meat visible in it, so I ordered buttered grits and was plenty happy. Another goal for the year that I am not sure should actually be a goal but am considering anyway: building up to eating food that was cooked with meat in it, but probably not actually eating the meat. So the rice and beans that's cooked with a hunk of ham in it, potatoes and corn cooked in the same pot with the crawfish or shrimp... I'm still really not interested in eating meat, and I'm pretty sure my digestive system isn't either after nearly ten years of vegetarianism, but I really do want to experience the culture as best I can, and I really don't want to turn down the incredible hospitality offered to me here.

I drove, and was happy to do so, to start getting my bearings on the area. The whole Crescent City thing is confusing-- there are streets that go from one side of the city to the other, but they don't exactly run due east-west. Still, we had a pleasant drive, ultimately down Canal Street and Magazine Street back over to our neighborhood, Carrollton. It was a good day.

I'll never be blue, my dreams come true, on Bayou Blue!

Yes, I'm aware that Linda Ronstadt sings Blue Bayou, but I'm working in and around Bayou Blue, LA!

Yesterday was just awesome. The whole house visited my church, a VERY friendly, welcoming, small, rural congregation who worships early and has a brunch feast afterward every Sunday about an hour away from our house in New Orleans. I enjoyed biscuits and grits and fruit salad, and I survived many hugs and lots of hand holding. There's a certain context to a place like this.

I've spoken a little bit about place and placelessness before on here. As we visited Kris and Dick's (the pastors I'm working with on the Wetlands Theological Education Project among other things) house after church yesterday and I explored their expansive library covering wetlands and ecology and spirituality and a whole lot of geography. Oh man, these are my people. Dick and I got to talking about how a lot of the trouble in southern LA is place-space related, meaning, this is currently a PLACE (which has particular, personal meaning and some sort of sentiment, whether good or bad-- the locals certainly have good sentiments about their home here) but is quickly transitioning to a SPACE (which lacks that meaning, either by being wiped out or changed to the point that you can't recognize it for its place, like building the same big box stores in every town, or the landscape being totally destroyed-- it loses its uniqueness).

Now that you've survived the geography lesson du jour (look! I spoke French!), let me tell you what it looks like:

Incredible.





 

(More of my Louisiana photos can be found here!) 

  

So the problem here isn't just that there are a lot of wetlands, absolutely critical ecosystems, eroding away very rapidly-- for example, this tree stump in the middle of the photo was ON LAND six months ago.

The problem is that the people who live here have strong ties to the place they live. For the most part, they are still subsistence fishers, meaning, they really just harvest enough to survive as a community. They really aren't selling this stuff. Without a healthy ecosystem to fish in, or solid ground to live on, what will happen to the community? And what few, small efforts have been made to move these people inland, only intend to move individuals to new communities, not the entire community together. What will they do? How will they survive without each other? Not very well.


These signs and pipelines were everywhere, for petroleum and for natural gas. Our hosts for the day also let us know that they are damaged and leaking all over the place. No one checks up on them. The wetlands are just being polluted.

It can be very overwhelming to think about.

Instead, I'm going to focus on the beautiful hospitality, the incredible community, and the good work being done to protect it all. Tomorrow is my first day of work. I'm just going to meet some of the researchers I'll be working with and come up with a contract, but it's the first step of many toward supporting some really awesome projects.

We were supposed to experience Cajun music and dancing at a place called the Jolly Inn, but the owner closed up shop to go fishing himself, so we've all agreed to make the trip another time!

It took less than three days.

I arrived late Tuesday. My first day of work isn't till next Tuesday, and yet, I found myself at a NRCS field office yesterday in Luling, enjoying a meeting with the First People's Conservation Committee. This includes area tribal leaders, some current and retired NRCS employees, and Kris and Dick, the pastors from First Presbyterian Church of Bayou Blue who are launching the Wetlands Theological Education Project. I'm here in New Orleans for a year to support all of these things (and more)!

It's kind of surreal being here this week, the eighth anniversary of Katrina's devastating landfall. The hurricane definitely changed the story around here, and is just part of nearly every conversation, even in a very subtle way. While Sandy was nowhere near as devastating as Katrina, I feel some small connection to this place through that experience, mostly in thinking about environments and how the landscape contributed to the failures along the east coast and the gulf coast. I'm working primarily with wetlands, which are absolutely critical to environmental stability-- a haven for biodiversity, a crucial wildlife habitat, a sort of sponge in times of deluge... also, they're beautiful. Just stunning.

I'll save the gigantic lessons on wetlands ecology and local environmental problems for another day. I learned at the meeting about the constant loss of homeland, heritage and livelihoods down bayou from New Orleans. It's very sad, but there are a lot of really great people involved in trying to stop, and hopefully reverse, these losses. There is so much great work being done. Just a few of the things we talked about--

• working on size regulations for soft shell crab farming
• prescribed burning programs in the wetlands (to encourage regrowth)
• native plantings, including the Sand Live Oak, a tree that hardly grows in that area anymore
• water quality protection without sacrificing storm surge protection
• mapping projects to show land ownership and land changes

They called me a "technical person" on this team. It's so exciting that my education and interests mean something to this project. I am so excited to get to work on Tuesday.

The only trouble with working "down bayou" is that a lot more people speak French and Creole, which I do not have any sort of foundation for. I've decided my goal is to learn enough French to be able to start spelling things correctly, and to be able to read signs without feeling like I'm embarrassing myself. In the meeting today, French snuck in and out of the conversation. While I'm nervous about totally lacking these skills, it's really cool to see the unique culture of this place.

I wanted to share Dick's blessing over our lunch--
"Remind us that life is a gift, and a responsibility, and that it can be a joy. Amen."