Little Black and Dunn's Falls

We just finished up our second week of our first round spike, so I wanted to give you all an update as to how everything’s going.

Like I said last time, we’re working with the Pat Harrison Waterway District, a state agency that oversees several parks throughout southeastern Mississippi in dealing with water management, flood control, and recreational activities. Our service will be at 3 different parks in the system, so we’ll be moving around a bit more than other teams. Our primary supervisor, Stewart, works with the central office and not any one park in particular, but he seems to have strong connections at all of them. Stewart’s incredibly hands-on and also really concerned with the quality of our experience while working with the PHWD as well as the quality of our work. He’s a great resource of knowledge and a great example of a can-do attitude for the whole team. And his positive attitude puts all of us at ease.

We started our spike at Little Black Creek Water Park which is in between Purvis and Lumberton, just south of Hattiesburg. We’re staying in the lodge hall, which is just one big room, where we’ve set up cots and folding tables and chairs, with a kitchen and a bathroom attached to it. There’s no shower in our building, so we have to go use one of the bathhouses available in the RV site part of the campground. The park is beautiful—the lake is right outside our front door, and all the trees and animals make for really great surroundings for our work and for our PT. Our first bit of work here has been painting the exterior of the lodge where we’re staying. It’s been nice not to have a commute to work! We had to scrape and paint with a cream color all of the upper trim around the eaves of the building and then go back and paint the walls a color we’ve named “Pat Harrison green” because it’s the color on all their buildings and signposts. The green takes about three coats to go on and not look streaky and weird, so it’s taken us some time to get the job done. We’ll probably finish that up tomorrow and then hopefully start on our main task here: helping to create a three-mile long horse trail.

Our lodge hall before the paint

Our lodge hall after the front was painted!

This past week we were staying up near Meridian, MS in Archusa Water Park and working in Dunn’s Falls Water Park, about 40 minutes away. We were helping them to get ready for a DAR dedication ceremony they had on Friday, honoring the founder of the Falls, John Cooper Dunn, a descendant of a Revolutionary War soldier, who started a grist mill and created a waterfall to power it. We built a 95 foot long privacy fence, tore up and replaced shingles which were on the wooden steps down to the falls to provide slip control, did some painting, and re-stained a cabin and the park office. We had a lot of fun and got a lot of work done! The caretakers of the park had a big lunch for us on Thursday—ribs, burgers, potato salad, baked beans, salad, and lemon icebox pie. Yum. A news crew from Meridian came out on Wednesday morning to do a little segment on our work and the ceremony. You can check it out at http://www.wtok.com/home/headlines/58188632.html

River 2 in front of our 95' privacy fence

I’m having a great time with my team—getting to know them all a little better individually and as a group, learning everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, and laughing a lot. My two PT coordinators are running some pretty hard PT sessions and I can feel myself getting stronger. I’m working on some pretty sweet biceps, too :).

I’ve encountered some tough situations as team leader, but I’m working through them bit by bit. My team has a lot of strong personalities, so balancing them and helping everyone try and find their space in the group. I’ve got a lot of support built into the program and some of my corps members have also reached out to help me out when it seems like I need it. I really appreciate all of them.

I miss you all a lot and think about you often. I’ll try to find some time to make some phone calls this week and do some catching up. In the meantime, comments and e-mails are always appreciated. I’ve got limited internet access (about once a week or so), but I’ll get them eventually.

Love love love.