Enjoying the Scenery

Older people are great. They've had decades or in the case of this 103 year old lady we met recently, more than a century to unlearn inhibitions, gain wisdom and gather experiences to share with those of us just beginning our paths. Our new friend was a great sport about being in group photos too.

I've noticed a trend in my previous blogs – I tend to write mostly about the lessons I've learned in this program and the people, places, or circumstances surrounding those ideas. It's not that I don't notice the scenery, the activities we do, the buildings in the cities or the food I'm eating (I notice the food – my team calls me the human garbage disposal because I'll eat just about anything, and all of it). I do take these things in, but when I sit down to write something that I think is worth sharing, the most impactful ideas, events, and people of the recent days and weeks come to mind.

Truthfully I spend at least as much if not more time thinking about the scenery of life than its deeper undercurrents. I imagine the reverse would probably be exhausting. I believe we're here to do good and improve the world for others to live richer lives, but to somebody else, we are the others. Therefore it must be worth enjoying for ourselves – since we're somebody else's greater good, too. So I must admit as I've gotten better at dealing with the roles I take on the team and honestly in some cases just stopped doing them for a number of reasons, I've spent quite a lot of that new found freedom from responsibility enjoying some of the more beautiful things in life, large and small, enduring and fleeting, tangible and not.

Much like life in general, the AmeriCorps experience can feel sometimes like a brutally challenging endurance race, and finding time to slip away and rest on the journey is a critical component of success. So as I've experienced more prolonged stress and frustration than arguably any other time in life, I've also appreciated taking time to enjoy the simple things around me more deeply than I have before.

If you've been reading this blog with any regularity you probably know by now that as much as I don't like to talk, I do like to write. A particularly beautiful sunset, the winter's first snowfall, or the stars standing silent watch in an open night sky have inspired human beings for thousands of years, and I am no different. So this post is just a collection of a few of the quieter moments I've experienced and recorded in this program, things I feel need have happened for no other purpose than simply being part of the experience of life. ~

Words cannot describe the scent of purity that permeates the high mountain air before a storm, heralding rain. Experience alone can convey the peculiar sensation of being caught in a driving downpour and fixating on a single rain drop rolling off the tender undergrowth. Description cannot truly invoke the enveloping embrace of the wanderer by the fog that forms only on the top of the world, on the arching spines of God’s monumental roosts. Language may inspire some desire for a similar experience in a willing listener, but only those who have actually tromped after the call of their hearts to the raw, peaceful power of the mountains will understand.

-July 2016, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee

Last night, the snow billowing through the path of a lone street lamp outside the town's tiny hospital transported me, for a moment, from the dark shuttered room on the third floor of this old chestnut church to another place, another time.

The empty, vast expanse of melancholy came over me like it did all those sleepless nights in Rochester, when I would walk from Brick City, alone, into the storm. After slaving all day and all night in pursuit of a nameless ideal, I felt the ocean of softly falling snow was in that moment, all for me.

-November 2016, Rainelle, West Virginia

The majesty of the mountains in the winter rain on a balmy day, a fluke in mid December. Mist rises from the the river bed and idles among the houses set on the shores. An enormous American flag is visible intermittently between the wisps of cloud as we pass, a proud symbol of patriotism plastered to the sides of a patchwork wooden house.

I love rainy days.

-December 2016, State Highway, West Virginia

-This is a beautiful place . . . The stars in the velvety night sky. The spider patrolling a tiny pile of desiccated excrement. Bullet casings in the console of a new SUV. Full hearts and full smiles, the scent of coffee (Dunkin') mixing with light perfume. Making new friends, feeling real warmth in a handshake and knowing you've returned it. Dancing badly but boldly, and escaping alone to the shadow of a Georgia Pine . . .

-February 2017, Albany Georgia

Why do these insects stay in the air during a storm? Are they the thrill seekers of their kind, dodging monstrous rain drops amid the thunderous crash of the heavens rending? Are they the fearless few who will brave terror for a piece of life no others can claim? Is a romantic adventure of epic proportion playing out above my head in the sparse clusters of tiny motes flitting about the dim, rain-speckled porch light?

-February 2017, Albany, Georgia

Pleasantly odd names so far encountered in the South, running list:

• The French Broad River
• Funck's Restaurant
• The Pleasing Fungus Beetle
• McNutt street, WV
• Big Ugly, WV
• Shartlesville
• Chunky, MS
• Bland, VA
• Chilhowie, TN
• Lick Creek Road, WV
• Big Clear Creek, Rupert WV
• Loudermilk (last name in a WV graveyard. Quitermilk nowhere to be found)
• Beelick Knob, unincorporated WV
• Red Lick, LA

I went with the fireteam to run chainsaws today. My arms are covered in dirt, sawdust, and blood, and I smell like motor oil, sweat and fear. It was a good day.

-February 2017, Albany, Georgia

A breeze winds its way through the little field of wobbly yellow clover flowers. They look so soft, almost like moss, from the balcony. I imagine I could lie there and forget the world, serene and immobile in the warm evening sunshine as the scent of food and laughter wafts from the girls' upstairs apartment.

My body has that elusive contented ache of a job well done in the open air. At last released from its earlier labors my mind slows its pace as exhaustion and exposure heighten my senses. The afterglow of a persistent afternoon sun radiates from my cheeks and the hollows of my eyes as my stomach rumbles. When you're hungry you can pick out all the little details of a scent, pinpointing the presence exactly of each ingredient: zucchini sautéed in olive oil, butter- bronzed white bread. But on days like today you can't tell if the salt you smell is in the air or on your skin. This is a visceral kind of satisfaction, one I imagine earlier, less sedentary and less comfortable peoples felt quite often. It seems so romantic to the mind of one of the most well fed people in history engaging in only a single day fast.

Albany, Georgia

A sunset the color of pink Araucana eggs, deepening over a tawny Georgia plain. The way the vivid, dark pink glow slots through the tree horizon to catch a solitary trunk in the thicket. Feeling like a rabbit might in a young New Jersey pine stand, dwarfed by ancient trees. Chasing the sunset down a long, wide, flat and straight expanse of road, the line broken only by the occasional truck or SUV and accompanying wave.

A drunk neighbor crossing property lines with an old dog flattened joyfully across the back of his ATV. Burning pine needles, the imminent yammering of an approaching coyote pack and the primal fear I felt as they all stopped at once at my approach.

The otherworldly brightness of the stars that begins as day mixes vibrantly with night in an effervescent show of colors, points of white light, and dusky midnight blue-grays. The reflection of the cosmos' daily embrace of opposites on the tiny pond peeking through the twisting oaks and towering pines.

The impossible bigness of the sunset Georgia sky, the dome of atmosphere stretching farther than I thought any eye could see. The vastness of the space punctuated by tiny jet planes, traveling with their inchworm tails every which way, like lone martian explorers lazily touring the plains, or blasting straight up for the stars a thousand miles away. Calvin and Hobbes' Spaceman Spiff comes to mind, the child of Bill Waterson's imagination, and I smile as just for a moment, I too take off for the arid plains of Mars and zip through an alien sky.

These things I would have missed had God not given me feet to run and a joyous heart to sing his praises as I encounter him in glorious creation.

-February 2017, Albany, Georgia

We've got less than a week left in Albany, then Delta 1 will pack up our bags and start on the road to Shiloh Tennessee, where the team will restore fields at Shiloh National Military Park to their historical condition – 5 weeks of chainsaw work. Before they get there they'll be dropping me off in Birmingham Alabama, where I'll be for a couple days before being picked up on the way to Kentucky. Thoroughbred 1, the composite team I joined (and whose name refers to the tradition of horse breeding and racing in the area where we'll be working) will spend 5 weeks building and maintaining trails in Daniel Boone National Forest before heading back to campus in Vicksburg for a final reunion, closure, graduation, and departure.

Thanks for following along! Til next time,

-Dan

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

The Pendulum Swings

After three pleasant weeks spent in Lafayette, Louisiana rebuilding a flooded Boys and Girls club, Delta One was redeployed to Albany, Georgia for immediate response to the tornado that struck the city. We'll have completed our second week here this Sunday and are slated to remain until mid-March. A tornado disaster looks quite different from floods, but the end result is similar, or at least it is here. Albany is a very poor city, and many people lost what modest livelihood they had with little or no immediate recourse other than the generosity of fellow citizens who were fortunate enough to have escaped storm damage.

In support of the relief effort, our team is again working in a warehouse like we did for two months in Baton Rouge, though it is quite a bit different from our previous experience. The disaster is different, the community is different, the volunteers running the relief and recovery effort are from different walks of life – and we ourselves are not the same as we were on our first deployment six months ago.

We've had a little more contact with the affected community this time around, though not as much as I might like. I understand logically the benefit of what we're doing in the warehouse, but it is very difficult for me to really feel for what these people are going through without meeting them and listening to them tell their stories. That's why, though I still really wish we had more time in the field, I was very happy to have spent just one afternoon out in the community with my teammate Carlos and two volunteers from the warehouse.

There was a large, mainly Hispanic trailer park community in Albany that was especially hard hit during the storm. There were many deaths there but because the people who died were undocumented and not citizens, the loss of their lives was not counted in the official reports. Now many of the survivors in Albany are hiding from representatives of the official relief efforts for fear of deportation. There are a number of community leaders who are trying to seek them out to give them basic aid like food, hygiene products, clothing and cleaning supplies for the remaining trailers which are now drastically overloaded after those with intact roofs took in those whose homes may be wrapped around a tree. The two volunteers at our warehouse took it upon themselves to do the same as we are a hub for donation reception and distribution around the city and uniquely positioned to help any and all who may be in need of assistance.

Carlos and I were asked to come along that day because our team leader had informed these volunteers that we spoke Spanish. I tried to make it clear that while Carlos is fluently bilingual, I'm conversational at best and slow even at that level. They took me along anyway if for no other purpose than to pick heavy things up and put them down, but it quickly became clear that my presence would make very little difference to the outcome of the day. Carlos could translate and communicate perfectly well on his own, and the volunteers' knowledge of their native city combined with Carlos' knowledge of Hispanic communities as the three put together the pieces in this quest to find a people in hiding. It was thrilling to watch their minds work at the puzzle in real time – but what really struck me was how big the hearts were of the two women volunteers who took this humanitarian quest upon themselves. One is a stay at home mom, another an eighteen-year-old high school senior. Both have, like so many others we've met here, dropped their plans and given most if not all of their leisure time or even quit their jobs in the last month to help out not only freely but endlessly cheerfully as well. It doesn't matter where you stand on immigration policy, the financial particulars of disaster management or the politics of poverty; these people and others have taught me that sometimes the right thing to do is to put societal restraints on hold or even to go far, far out of your way to break societal barriers in order to show human compassion to real people in need.

This, happily, is the common thread that binds all three disasters I've personally had experience with, as well as others that I've heard about: when a community that has long been at odds over issues of politics, race, religion, immigration, crime, or economic disparity is literally torn apart by insurmountable forces of nature and shocked back to its most basic core of urgent human need – then the healing of these deep societal issues tends to follow the stitches sewn by neighbors helping neighbors at the basest level by offering food, shelter, clothing, medical supplies and their own time or the sweat of their backs in an all out effort to comfort one another in the wake of overwhelming loss. Towns and cities are broken and remade stronger than they were before.

I can freely admit now that emphatic moments like these where I really understand the meaning of the work I'm doing and so commit to doing it cheerfully, wholeheartedly and with every ounce of will I have are very few and far between. Personal pride in a job well done, fear of letting others down and a work ethic instilled by good parenting fill the gaps when passion ebbs, but a drive fueled by primarily internal reasons can only go so far. I've reached those limitations before in college, and have again this year in a much more emotional connotation.

I envy those who seem to have compassion written like an unspoken law on their hearts, for whom every difficult day is fueled by a genuine desire to make someone else's day better. I'm sure in reality that the people I view as paragons of compassion have their darker moments, and that I'm catching a glimpse of flawed people in their finest hours – achievable examples of what it means to be a good person. But their undeniable personal causation seems to stretch their finest hours to last weeks, months, years – and lifetimes.

A volunteer at the warehouse said today that service is negligible when you enjoy it. It's only really service when you're doing something you don't want to do, that is difficult or unpleasant for you but you do it cheerfully because you really want to help someone. I don't know if I agree with that. An author in a compelling book I read a long time ago said that when a person is trying to figure out what they're supposed to be doing with their lives, they should not be asking what the world needs, but what makes them feel alive – because what the world needs is people who have truly come alive.

God gives us all talents and gifts that we should use for the betterment of others. Many of these gifts we may really enjoy using. A person with a gift for connecting with children can revel in the mutual joy of those special connections, and someone may enjoy simply sharing the gift of youth and good health to help an elderly neighbor do yard work or repair their home. But on the other side of the spectrum, someone may have been given the capacity for leadership and though they have a family, a business and children of their own that they'd rather spend time with - they may work long, hard hours using that gift to organize a sprawling relief organization in their city's hour of need. They may get up tired early each morning and go to bed late every night after hardly a static moment during days of fending off questions, requests, arguments and endless logistics until they're so drained they can hardly talk with their own children at day's end – but through the pain and struggle of each day, they gain a deep satisfaction because they truly care about who they're doing for and they know that day they lived to their fullest potential on behalf of another human being

.

I suppose to be really, truly alive then is to be open to feeling the heights of joy and ease at some points of life and the depths of pain and struggle at others. But I believe that the struggles and even the joys are meaningless if lived only for oneself. At its core, that's what this year has been about for me – trying to learn how to live beyond myself from those who already know the secret. A friend once described volunteering as a selfish selflessness, and it's true. For all it might look like I have given on paper, I've received far more than I ever could have imagined, even when my reasons for working aren't always what they ideally should be. I can only imagine how much more rewarding it must be to serve when you've reached the point in your heart where selflessness on behalf of another person is in itself already it's own reward.

As always, thanks for following along! Til next time,

-Danny

An Adventurous Year

A pasture in Greenstone Valley, South Island, New Zealand

For the first part of our final round we're back in Louisiana working with Rebuilding Together Acadiana and Habitat for Humanity Lafayette, about an hour from Baton Rouge. It is gloriously warm. While taking a lunchtime nap in a parking lot the other day in sweaty, grimy, perfectly contented delirium I couldn't fathom why anyone would live through the bitter gray cold of a northern winter - until I remembered literally pouring the sweat that my sodden socks could no longer absorb out of my boots, not long ago and not far from here.

So far we've spent a few days bashing our bodies against flooded vinyl tile and carpets at a boys and girls club we're helping renovate. Despite and perhaps partially because of our swollen, bleeding hands and aching bodies I think the team enjoyed a satisfying first week helping transform the kids' after school refuge. We also got to spend a day with our old sponsors again! We helped the ACSDR staff give out flood relief supplies at a mobile unit and caught up quite a bit. Many of them never left Baton Rouge or left only for a short while and returned to help again, spending Christmas and New Years at the warehouse away from their families. We missed them very much and were very happy we got to see them again – even though I swore I'd never touch a palletjack again.

With some of our old sponsors at an ISP last Saturday

We'll be in Lafayette until the first week of March, when the team will move to Tennessee to work on restoring Shiloh National Military Park to its historical condition during the Civil War. It'll be 5 weeks straight of chainsaw work. However I'll only be there for a week before leaving Tennessee to join a composite team in Kentucky. This is a temporary group comprised of applicants from teams out of both River and Delta Units. For the last four weeks of the round we'll be staying in tents at a developed campground and hiking into Daniel Boone National Forest every day for trailbuilding and maintenance work. We all get our own tents, a new top-of-the-line day pack (sadly not ours to keep), and oodles of tools to play with including chainsaws, pulaskis and my personal favorite, the sickle of death – or the j-blade in polite company. It was a hard decision to leave Delta One for the last month of our final deployment, but this is the kind of work I had imagined AmeriCorps was all about. I'm very excited.

This pile of poorly photographed swag is going with us to Kentucky

Those are the main developments that have occurred since my last post. If I'm being honest a great many other things have occurred since then that are deeply meaningful to me because they pertain to places, events, or people that to my understanding remain the same as they once were, but which I approached in a different or entirely new way following the experiences I've had since beginning the AmeriCorps journey. The result were internally thrilling experiences and the realization that the lessons from this program really can be brought home to change my life - but externally it makes for a mundane story. Most of us who went home for Christmas break probably experienced something similar. I hope so!

I've discovered, as I think most of us do eventually, that we often learn much about our stance on things that have happened to us, people who affect us strongly, or emotions we just can't nail down just by sharing a little about these things with other people. In acknowledgment of that lesson, in tribute to the past year and because there wasn't much to report as far as AmeriCorps updates, I thought I'd make most of January's post a collection of thoughts from some of the events of 2016 that had the most impact on me as a person. It's a way to help me remember and process the year, but if any of the stories can entertain a dedicated or just really, really bored reader along the way then I'm happy to share.

2016 was by far the most adventurous year I've ever been blessed with in my admittedly short life. It still seems impossible to me that so much could happen in what simultaneously feels like an eternity and just a short while. As the year came to a close I realized I have a new appreciation for the power of reflection on the events of the recent past; probably because I've never had to process so many journeys, relationships, and lessons of such a personally unprecedented scale, variety, and impact in so short a time.

I rang in the new year loitering on a dirty concrete bridge, watching tiny clusters of fireworks launch out of backyards on a warm, humid Tahitian night. We celebrated the new year's birth a second time a few hours later after the jet plane carrying my friend Joe and I to New Zealand outran the sun and entered Oceania's timezone, still in the year 2015 at that point. We planned and paid for this journey to the far side of the world ourselves and spent three weeks traveling the North and South Island, eating a disgusting amount of fish and chips, meeting incredible people, and exploring some of the most beautifully rugged places in the world.

We spent a total of a week in the backcountry. I acquired some kind of tendonitis in both achilles tendons at quite an unfortunate time and couldn't walk in my boots on the trails, so I wound up hiking a ridiculous number of miles through the mountains in sandals not much thicker than about 20 sheets of paper. I was quite impressed with myself until we met a lovely Swedish girl running barefoot along the same rocky pass we'd just come from on the Routeburn track in the Southern Alps. I was suitably humbled.

Nevertheless the experience was at times excruciatingly painful. Joe and I kept up good conversations for much of the trek, but when a lull occurred it was easy to lose myself in the altered state of mind resulting from exhaustion, pain, and the inevitable meditations that only the wilderness can spur. The most memorable of these moments for me was a silent journey through the rocky meadows of Greenstone Valley near the end of a long, long day spent racing down the mountain trying to reach shelter before the approaching deluge caught up with us. Much of that day felt like a walking dream.

As I trudged through the serenely beautiful hell that is Greenstone Valley, my thoughts seemed to stray from the pinions of my mind to meander along their own paths separate from my feet. Flitting between moss covered rocks on the azure backs of butterflies no larger than buttons, I perceived neon beetles marching over grains of multicolored stone scattered beneath soaring forests of grass. Looking up to the storm gathering at my back, a gust of wind swept me suddenly off my feet and carried me, howling in elemental jubilation to its home high above the clouds. There, perched on the very top of the world, at the point where the horizon brings its clouds and the sky fetches stars to dance together around the mountain like the laughing children of giants - here, in serene silence high above myself, the bowl of the valley stretched before me, fringed on the distant horizon by mountains of impossible majesty, ignoring the tempest whipping up the streams below, utterly immovable by all save the very hand of God. Two brightly colored dots in blue and green dipped and bobbed in the sea of grass below, like inseparable specks of dust drifting inexorably through the wilderness - tiny, mute witnesses to the raw, writhing spasm of beauty that seemed in this moment, created just for them.

Suddenly shards of glass exploded from the ground beneath me. I fell from the mountaintop with impossible speed, every fiber of my being taut, wracked by agony. Aware once more of the demons of sloth and despair stabbing at my feet with every step, my thoughts were again corralled within the confines of their earthly cage. I blinked away the red haze of self pity, smiled a prayer of thanks at the darkening sky, and hurried on.

These are great camp sandals, but I can't say I recommend them as hiking shoes. Even with Doctor Scholl's.
We spent 3 weeks in the land down under-er and slightly to the left. For more New Zealand Photos, Joe has a great album up here

The next major event was returning to RIT in January to finish up my junior year. I'd left a year earlier to spend six months as a product design co-op with the games department at Hasbro toys in Rhode Island, and later another six months as a packaging engineering co-op with PCA at home in New Jersey. I'd been away from academia for a year on what to me was essentially paid vacation. I'd learned a lot working in the real world and for better or worse lost the drive to work twenty hour days, six days a week on academic design projects. The corporate world had taught me how to work efficiently, confidently and most importantly collaboratively with others – I ended that semester with a portfolio of my best work yet and many new friends in the Junior class. Life works in strange ways, though. They'll all have graduated before I return from AmeriCorps to finish my degree.

I work hard at school.

Really I do.

I swear!

I take great notes in Entrepreneurship class too.

See. But what's more fun, playing with LEGO clone troopers or doing ergonomics analyses...

This summer I had a couple months between the end of Spring semester and departing for AmeriCorps. One of my summer projects was finishing up the treehouse (it's more like an enormous birdhouse on stilts) that my brother and I designed with my dad's help. I'd questioned the wisdom of the project a number of times during the process, like during the third afternoon Johnny and I spent with our heads down the 3 foot hole we'd jackhammered through the wonderfully placed shale shelf spanning the entirety of our build site. We had to scrape out the shards of pulverized rock at the bottom of the holes with a rusty soup can before we could anchor the tree/stilt-house posts in them. However, the time and money were well spent if for no other reason than that the construction skills I learned on that project were put to good use in AmeriCorps helping people who didn't have a real house to live in, let alone a monstrously large owlbox to play in.

We've added windows, a rope ladder, and a sliding door since this photo was taken.
Shingling this thing was terrifying.

When I wasn't working on the tree house, Johnny and I explored the woods around the farm trying to find the perfect tree for making a bow, went spelunking in a local cave I'd discovered, and took long runs in the summer heat. Our feet took us to neighborhood creeks, abandoned cabins, and through an enormous local pit mine. This last one was questionably legal, but on July 4th I had it all to myself. Running for the sake of fitness is painful tedium, but when it takes you to hidden places and pumps adrenaline through your body and wonder through your senses as the waning afternoon sun bronzes your bare back – Maybe it's just runner's high, or in my case oxygen deprivation, but in those moments running is one of life's great pleasures.

On Tuesday nights I often went country line dancing with my mother. We'd taken lessons last winter when I was home doing my co-op. Looking back I probably spent more effort on flirting with the instructor than absorbing the lessons, but at the end we'd learned enough to have fun and made a lot of friends among the regulars at the dance hall.

A little while before I left for AmeriCorps, my family went for our first ever family camping trip to Harriman State Park, where my father used to camp with his friends in high school. There were surprisingly few excerpts from “Dad's big book of pathetic childhood memories” (haha, I hope you're reading this Pops), and we all had fun. Soon afterward I packed my bags, wrapped some wire (the poor man's ratchet clamp) around the bunsmobile's rattling muffler and drove off for Vicksburg. I couldn't have asked for a better send off. It was an idyllic summer.

At Harriman State Park this Summer.

Probably 50% of our photos come out like this. I think there's something wrong with Dad's camera.

The final stop before Vicksburg was a 4 day trip through the Smokies near Gatlinburg Tennessee.

I'd never been backpacking by myself before, and though I didn't want to admit it I'd become somewhat infatuated with stories like Into the Wild, Walden, and a multitude of other works that glorify the idea of the lone wanderer striking out into the unknown – whether the territory is unknown to the world or only to the wanderer.

The reality of my own adventure was a lot less visceral, but impactful nonetheless. After camping a night at the trailhead, I set out into the backcountry 600 miles from home, alone, pitifully frightened and certain I'd be bear-ed to death by nightfall. Three days later I walked out unscathed, unwashed, and with new friends, new skills and a healthy respect for the wild in place of my irrational fear. I hadn't seen a single bear.

After getting over the initial period of terror on the first day, I was able to relax enough to appreciate the beauty of the mountains. I hiked all day in silent solitude, ambling up the steep, narrow trail cut through the thick underbrush. As I climbed, the air became thicker and cooler, until wisps of cloud began to float through the trees. A storm was coming. Sometime in the early afternoon, the trees gave way to a bald on a narrow ridge. The wisps had thickened to an all-encompassing fog that seeped through the waist-high underbrush and stretched away from the ridge into what was surely infinity as I suddenly realized how the Great Smoky Mountains got their name.

As I waited for the sheets of rain I could hear approaching through the mist, I stood enraptured, enveloped by the fog that forms only there on the top of the world, on the arching spines of God's monumental roosts. As the skies opened up, I stood in the downpour, watching singular drops of sweet alpine rain roll off the leaves of the wild blueberry bush at my side. Words cannot describe the serenity of the mountains in moments like those.

That night two of the most rugged women I've ever met, from Kentucky as I later learned, arrived at the campsite. After an initial awkward period before I realized I probably looked like a creepily silent, brooding teenager all alone in the woods with a 7 inch blade still strapped to his waist, I started a conversation, tried to prove the knife was just for stripping bark off wet firewood (not for mortal combat with bloodthirsty bears of course) and helped them gather wood for a campfire. The next morning they asked if I'd like to join them. Overjoyed to be rescued from my solitude after only one day, I did.

My intrepid Kentucky friends

We traveled through the woods together for the next two days swapping stories. They taught me a ton of backcountry tricks and tips I'd never seen before, including how to build a fire with sopping wet wood. Most importantly I think, I learned the value of sharing life's most beautiful experiences. I'll never give up moments alone like I had in the rain on that ridge, and I'll definitely go backpacking by myself again for just that reason. But as with Joe in New Zealand, with my brothers in the Catskills and with friends in Vermont and New York, so it was with new friends in the Smokies. The world was made to be shared, and so is made more beautiful in the sharing.

Thanks for following along. Until next time!

-Danny

P.S. Gatlinburg, often called the gateway to the Smokies, is just a few miles from where I hiked in July. The city burned to the ground in November during a historic, human-caused wildfire. AmeriCorps sent two special teams of volunteers there over Christmas break to help with the immediate relief efforts, my teammate Carlos among those who volunteered to go. The wealth of many people in the mountains is based mainly in the value of their generational homes, which means they lost their nest eggs when the fire destroyed those homes. Left with literally nothing, many people are relying on the waning influx of aid from outside sources to start rebuilding their lives. I encourage anyone who can to help out!

http://www.mountaintough.org/i-want-to-help/

A Jack of All Trades and a Master of None

Before we left campus at the end of October, staff at HQ told us to expect this round to feel much slower than the previous two months spent all-cylinders-firing in Baton Rouge. It was to be expected that free of the high stress environment which simultaneously compelled, strained and nurtured us, we would have far more leisure time to focus on our own development. Hence the unofficial status of Round Two as the “life after AmeriCorps” round.

It’s proven true. We generally work eight to nine hour days. We have access to a full, well stocked kitchen right downstairs – continually supplemented with goodies supplied by the ever generous Methodist women – showers just seconds from our sleeping quarters and deliciously long, full two day weekends. Apart from a few grueling days spent turning churned up, frozen fields of clay into respectable yards­, the work is challenging enough to be satisfying but not exhausting.

This leaves us with quite a bit of time to focus on what comes next. This December will mark the halfway point of our 10 months of service. With only about five months to go, the reality that this program is not in fact an indefinite suspension of normal life is beginning to set in. I’ve always found it odd to be planning the next adventure while still living its precursor, but that’s the way life goes. To stand still is to become complacent, and complacency is a dangerous thing.

It would be wrong to say I have no idea what I want to do next because I have a list a mile long  – but I have no sense of certainty, no compelling cause to devote myself to without reserve, no overarching goal that drives my every action. Some people my age do have these things. Others have energy and a wealth of distracting hobbies. Some have no desire to do anything other than watch YouTube subscriptions. Personally, I want a cause.

I’ve met too many people in these past five months who clearly have a cause emblazoned on their hearts not to want the same for myself. People who travel hundreds of miles or just a mile down the road to do something kind for someone in need. People who sacrifice their weekends, vacation time, and restful retirement to give someone else another chance to have what they themselves are giving up. People who work 80 hours a week so someone who has lost everything can eat Thanksgiving dinner with their family in a safe, warm place that they can call their own. People who after all their labors, after all their own trials and weariness, far from becoming embittered by their efforts will break into goofy smiles and laughter or burst into tears like children who can’t contain their joy as they see smiles on the faces of those for whom they’ve labored. How could I watch something like this and not want to be a part of it?

At least until April 27^th, I am part of it as a small portion of the substantial force for good that is AmeriCorps. However, sometimes – well ok, most of the time – I get so caught up in the doing of whatever needs done that I forget to sit back and think about the deeper meaning behind it. Baton Rouge was an extreme example; many days were at their core a grim, grey grind for the idea of a worthy cause with almost no time to stand back and really let myself feel the why and the who of my labors.

Rainelle is much different. Since our schedule and housing have been so much more stable during this project than during our previous deployment, we’ve had a chance to slow down and take a closer look at what we are doing here and who we are doing it for. Working in such a small community has allowed me to connect on a deeper level with the people we serve and to see beyond their current need to the lives they are fighting to rebuild for their neighbors and for themselves. Natives and non-natives alike have come together to work hard for a period of time in service of something bigger than themselves. While they find fulfillment in their efforts, taking that same ethic of service back to their normal lives as cubicle dwellers, teachers or coal miners brings them just as much joy. The experience has changed my idea of what a successful life of service looks like.

Service isn't necessarily represented by a list of quantifiables - numbers of flooded homes gutted, volunteers coordinated, sheets of drywall hung. It doesn't need to look like a resume filled with accolades attaching your name to the design of lifesaving inventions, orchestration of peace treaties or creation of multi-national non-profits. While these are all worthy achievements, they're not the only or perhaps even the best way to go about a good life. In short, I guess I learned something that to many might seem obvious, but which only experience could teach me. That is, you don't have to save the world to live a good life. You just have to care about the people within your reach, however wide that is. Some days you might only be able to reach down the block, or across the table, and that's ok.

Thanks for following along! Til next time,

Danny

P.S. Most of these photos are courtesy of my teammates. If it's a good photo or if I'm in it, it's probably not mine.

Our team leader Shane removing insulation soaked with 5 month old floodwater from a dark, dank crawlspace. I managed to avoid this job. I'm a little jealous (it's a great story) but mostly pretty cool with it.

Our project on Thanksgiving Day

Carlos mourns the loss of  this painting to the art world. All sorts of strange things washed into this field during the flood, including a full box spring and a ridiculously heavy commercial ice chest from a nearby gas station.

Sky and Lindsey in Tyveks for a morning of mucking and gutting

Hanging drywall is fun. Hanging dryceiling, not so much.

Mark is a park ranger and self taught builder who used his vacation week to come down to Rainelle and help out. He spent an afternoon teaching us how to build a porch.

Jessica moving lumber at the Town Hall warehouse. When you're building 20 homes at once, you don't order wood by 10, 20 or even by the rackful. You order it by the butt-ton. We've moved a lot of lumber.

Devin spending some quality time with a little girl at a local animal shelter's adoption day. All but two of the dogs and 30 out of 45-ish cats found homes, a happy ending for the influx of displaced pets after the flood.

Delta One's Thanksgiving feast. $4.75 per person per day can actually go a long way.

Dmac and Sedrick serving desserts at a community Thanksgiving Dinner the day before

We seeded and hayed the acre of land this and 7 other new homes were built on. There was a sleet storm that day and the entire lot was an ocean of mud. I made a less than voluntary mud-angel on one the steeper hills.

A recruiting event at a local community college. Nobody wanted to talk to us, but at least we looked spiffy.

Ribbon cutting at a moving dedication ceremony for several brand new volunteer-built, donation-funded homes given to flood survivors

Obligatory sunset photo

Is it Christmas break yet?