After a quick stop in Madison for lunch, groceries, and other supplies we soon arrived at the capmground. It had been drizzling off and on all day and we all hoped it would clear up for the rest of the weekend. We hastily set up our tents during a lapse between the sprinkles and went to explore. Devils Lake is a glacial remnant nestled between two bluffs to the East and West with a post glacial vally extending to the North and South. The bluffs make it one of the premier climbing destinations in the mid-West. Gravity and erosion have created inccredible rock formations and the base of the bluffs are littered with gargantuan boulders that have crumbled from the cliffs and plunged to the ground. We spent Friday evening swimming and doing some limited exploration of the eastern bluff before returning to camp and eating our dinner of red beans and rice while it continued to drizzle. That night I was awakened early in the morning by heavy rain, thunder, and lightning that was close enough to compel Eddie and me to spend the better part of an hour in my car before returning to bed, Katie wasn’t phased.

The next day we decided to explore all of the major landmarks around the lake and on the bluffs despite the continued drizzle, about five miles worth of hiking, leaving the longer hike for Sunday. This plan was carefully crafted so that we could venture into civilization to watch the big football games on Saturday night. I will not endeavor to describe the beauty of the trails we hiked that day. The fact that it took us over six hours to hike the five short miles should give some indication of the spectacular views and the abundant climbing opportunities that we encountered (the pictures should help too). When we returned to our tents we were exhuasted even though it was only 3:30. I started dinner almost immediately, tin foil dinners of potatoes and onions with salt, pepper, and plenty of butter cooked in the fire and supplimented by a can of baked beans. Delicious! We watched the games at a sports bar just down the road from the park where I sampled a Wisconsin delicassy, deep fried cheese curds. I am not sure I have ever eaten anything so greasy before.

We set out early Sunday morning on our fifteen mile roundtrip hike to Palfrey’s Glen, a hike suggested to us by one of the REI employees Eddie spoke to in Madison. The Hike to the glen was pretty, made more enjoyable by the fact that the rain had ceased. We predominantly walked through forest occasionally emerging into open meadows filled with wild flowers. As pretty as the hike itself was, Palfrey’s Glen was much more beautiful. The trail took us into a gorge carved over the centuries by a crystal clear stream running through the center. The bluffs extended fifty or so feet in the air and there were places rocks had fallen from them where it looked as if someone had taken an immense scoop out of the bluff with an ice cream spoon. We ate lunch on top of the cliffs peeriong down at the tiny stream below before heading home. We had a dinner of chili (thanks for the recipe dad) and corn chips then sat up talking and making smores around the fire before turning in for the night, a perfect way to cap off an incredible weekend.

We are working directly for FEMA on this project, acting as intake workers. We work in teams of two making phone calls to contact everyone who has registered with FEMA in order to make sure anyone with any unmet needs (food, housing, clothing, etc) get access to resources. We schedule interviews with anyone who is interested in meeting, during which we listen to each person’s story, find out what specific needs they have, and record all of the information on an intake form. This information goes back to FEMA so that they have more specific data on each person’s situation. It also goes into a database to which charitable organizations have access and are able to see an individual’s specific needs and contact them directly with resources to fill those needs. With particularly desperate cases we go to our FEMA supervisor, with whom we meet daily, and he “takes care of them.” We work 8:30 until 5:30, or whenever our evening debrief ends, six days a week and most of us do independent service projects on our day off. Our days off are staggered throughout the week so that everyone can work Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

It has been an incredible experience listening to all of the amazing stories of survival and the hope and positivity expressed by so many people is inspiring. However, it is also an enourmous emotional strain listening to the stories of people who narrowly escaped death and are on the edge of financial collapse. We have spoken with many families who are on the verge of eviction, utilities shut off, who can’t put food on the table every night, or don’t have a place to live at all. There is tremendous anxiety after such meetings. So many things run through your mind; “did I give them the right advice, did I give them the right resources, will they get back on their feet because of what I told them, or will they be on the street soon because of something I forgot?” There are many things I will miss about this project, however, I am glad to be leaving soon.

Adding to my excitement at leaving is an event in honor of the work we and other corps members have done in the Joplin recovery effort. We will be honored at the Chiefs vs. Rams pre-season game this Friday in Kansas City and will get to stay for the game! The Chiefs will also hold a dinner for us, I can’t wait!

The project sponsors, with whom we worked on a daily basis, were a great group of people. Fun and hard working, they were also a blast outside of work. Although we had indoor accomodations in the club house, I decided to pitch my tent on what used to be the practice putting green and sleep outside in the fresh air (the basement of the clubhouse was more than a little musty). I knew I was going to enjoy the project the first night when I layed down and realized I had accidentally possitioned my tent so that I was staring directly at the big dipper! I am not sure I have ever seen stars so bright.

Although the work for our first week was not the most exciting, we spent the majority of our time cutting and bagging thistle and Queen Ann’s Lace, I still managed to enjoy it. It honestly was hard not to; the weather was great, so was the company, and the area in which we were working was beautiful.

There was another volunteer group staying at the golf course while we were there, WisCorps. WisCorps is a Wisconsin youth conservation group for people ages 16-twenty something. At first we thought they were weird. They were always doing bad eastern European acents and Arnold impressions. Then, once we had the prevelidge of working along side them, we thought they were even more weird.

This dream project was to be short lived however. Our team leader got a call form headquarters less than a week into our stay in Wisconsin.  We were shipping out to Joplin, MO to do intake for tornado survivors with FEMA. I was devastated. I had been enjoying virtually everything about the project, even WisCorps was starting to grow on me. We had also found an incredible ice cream and chocolate shop in Port Washington, the nearest town. To add insult to injury, the last morning we were there I got out of my tent to see a deer standing less than ten yards away. On the Friday before we left our sponsors had a cookout for us, WisCorps, and another team that had been stationed in Milwaukee. It was meant as a welcome but was repurposed as a bitter farewell. Our sponsors were deeply disappointed that we were leaving, understandably so.

It was a macabre affair. We sullenly played three games of softball, cheering each other on sarcastically while running up the score as much as possible. We begrudgingly ate the burgers, veggie burgers, various salads, and brownies that were prepared for us. And at the end we sat in a circle and talked about how glad we were to be leaving the project. (This is all saarcasm of course, which I realize is difficult to convey in text. In actuality we had a wonderful time and were all very sad to be leaving).

I am going to save my words and let the pictures I took do most of the talking about Pictured Rocks. Among the photos is are several of a tree stranded on an island of rock that had once been part of the bluff but is now isolated due to erosion, its only connection to the rest of the rock face is the tree’s roots. Of course some of my teammates and I were compelled to crawl across the roots, which were about fifty feet in the air, to give the tree some company. I later found a way to climb up the “rock island,” It was like solving a difficult puzzle and I felt a deep sense of satisfaction when I reached the top.

Houses piled like kindling ready for the fire of some sadistic titan

Skeletons of trailers tossed a hundreds yards from their origin lay like the bones of a beached wale long since picked clean

The stench of mold and rotting plywood thick among the rubble, a reminder of the suffering and loss

Prey with no perpetrator to pursue procrastinated purposeless and pitiful waiting to be rescued from their purgatory

Baking in the blistering sun beseeching the brightest beacon for benevolence, outlook bleak

Okolona, Mississippi: Disaster relief was an experience. Some parts were good, some bad but I am certainly grateful to have had it. The day we arrived we toured the area and drove through Smithville, one of the hardest hit towns in the region. The devastation was incredible to perceive. Steel beams that once held up a grocery store were wrapped around telephone poles as if some colossus was playing horseshoes with them. The store itself was gutted, its innards strewn about carelessly. Houses were reduced to piles of bricks and lumber, the whole landscape looked like the wake of Sherman’s March.

            In the days that followed our arrival we had a lot of work. Our first work site, the inspiration for the poem above, was an area where three trailers once stood. All that we saw were the remains. Across from the site was a graveyard of splintered trees. A FEMA contracted crew was on the scene to pick up debris from the trailers; however, because of the regulations involved the crew could not actually do anything. The family that had once lived in one of the trailers was still living on the property. They had no other place to go and the seven of them, including two small children, shared one tent and two cars. They spent most of the day trying to escape the mid-ninety degree heat in the shade of what had once been an enormous pine, but was now half of its former self. One of the homeowners told us how ever since he had moved there he had wanted to cut down the tree, now it was the only thing left to remind him where his home once stood.

            The family needed to have debris removed from their yard in order to get a FEMA trailer, however, the contractors couldn’t enter their property without a right of entry agreement, which they did not yet have. We did our best to collect the debris that was strewn across the property and deposit it in piles so that when the proper paperwork was filed the contractors could quickly remove the debris and a trailer could be delivered in as expedient a manner as possible. We returned to the same property four days later to cut up and remove a tree that had fallen on another trailer and the family was still there under the half tree, debris still piled, no FEMA trailer in sight.

            We did quite a bit of chainsaw work during the project. I am particularly proud of what we accomplished at a house that I didn’t even know existed upon arriving at the property it was so obscured by downed trees. My team was able to remove virtually every vestige of fallen tree so that the driveway was completely clear and the house was visible from the road. We also removed an immense tree from an elderly woman’s yard that barely avoided crushing the house. At this site, however, it was not the work that made the job special but for whom we did the work.

            It was a general rule that all those I encountered who had been affected by the tornadoes had a remarkably positive attitude. The family from the first site had every right to be angry, frustrated, and depressed but they took the whole situation in stride and focused on the future rather than the present. This elderly woman who, whose name escapes me now, was no exception. After we finished removing the tree we joined her on her porch and chatted. She had one of the best southern accents I have heard; it was a pleasure just to hear her talk. She was incredibly grateful for the work we did and provided us with cold water to show her appreciation. She kept asserting that if she had known we were coming she would have made us lunch, what I wouldn’t give to have had some of her southern cooking! She was as sharp as a tack and was a bit sarcastic, she reminded me a little of Grandma Lewis. It caught us all off guard when she made harmless fun of one of our teammates, it was hilarious especially since she did it so subtly that he didn’t realize he was being made fun of. The conversation was delightful, the most memorable part was when some of my teammates who had never been to the South were telling her how much they liked it and were going to tell their friends all about it. She replied, in her slow drawl: “ya’ll tell ‘em it’s good, jus don’t tell ‘em how good it is.”

            That love of home was evident in almost every single person we talked to. Although none put it quite so eloquently, one could hear it in their tone of voice and see it in their actions. It was good to be back in the South.

We stopped after two hours to eat lunch and change drivers, I moved from riding shotgun to the very back where I had the seat to myself. The previous occupant had graciously created a cloud-like nest of pillows and I could feel myself nodding off almost immediately while listening to a podcast my favorite npr program. I was rudely awakened by some excitement coming from the front of the vehicle about an hour and a half later. I took out my headphones and wondered allowed what was going on. Meanwhile the team leader contacted our support vehicle, a shiny new pickup carrying the two teams’ tools and sleeping cots, in which four of my teammates were riding. Then the unthinkable happened; although if you have read the previous post it is not all that unthinkable and in fact I was half expecting/dreading it. The TL announced we were turning around. Due to the record flooding of the Mississippi the housing that had been arranged for us was no longer available.

The team was deeply disappointed, not only would we not be able to help recover from the devastation of the tornadoes, the area now had to deal with flooding. To add insult to our injury, and this sounds a little selfish having written the previous sentence but it was an ordeal at the time, we got stuck in traffic and were at a complete stand still for at least a half hour. It was a day well spent, a nine hour jaunt across the boarder into Illinois and back.

So the plan, for now, is to stay in Vinton until Monday during which time the project will be reassessed and we may end up going to Mississippi, or not. At this point I’ll just keep my bag packed and be ready for anything. The only positive from the delay is that we will be on campus when some teams are coming back from their first projects and I’ll get to see people I haven’t seen in two months, also I get to go play ultimate again.

Now for the real story. Since Saturday my team and the other team slated to go to Mississippi with us have been just hanging out at our headquarters in Vinton. We were supposed to be leaving Tuesday but apparently, due to some bulldozing contracts getting put through sooner than expected, our project sponsor had to reevaluate our mission. We have sort of been drifting, purposeless, around campus, which has actually been kind of nice. Yesterday (Tuesday) we played a corps member vs. staff game of basketball then a friend and I went to Waterloo, about a forty minute drive, to play some real, organized ultimate frisbee. I had an excellent time since I havn’t played real ultimate since January. I now have to go to my third project briefing in three days where the staff will hopefully tell us that we can leave.