NST 87

 I'm back from the field, having just hung out on the Delta with the Illustrious "Mostly A Team" (Amy, Alaine, Amanda, Andrew, Aaron, Dave, Marisa, Steven, and Zach) for the last couple weeks. I've been told that the Outward Bound gods give you the exact weather you need for your course, which was entirely true in this case. Right off the bat we suffered through a lightning drill on the sandbar, followed by a rainy 12 hours of our lives (not unlike my ENTIRE New Staff Training). After we made sure the participants knew how to put on their banana suits and sit on gear bags and ensolite mats, the skies cleared up and the raingear stayed stowed for the rest of the trip. Warm days, cool nights, more fireflies than I've ever seen, behavior sims, lessons, teamy teamness...oh my. Talk about a wonderful way to spend most of May.

Boston and Busack. Representing oh so many things here. My co-trainer, Katie and I both served as team leaders in AmeriCorps and would often joke that we were "getting things done" for Kurt Hahn and Outward Bound.

Trying to figure out how on earth to get the whole team from point A to point B with nothing to protect them from the lava but magic glasses.

Figuring it out

I emerged the morning after the rainy night, from our tiny, tiny trainer tent...and it was one of those mornings that I'm just so grateful for this job and life.

Marisa reaching for main.

Aaron checking out the chart. Just kidding. The map.

My favorite stretch of the river, past all the houseboats. This one, however, is looking a little worse for the wear.

Awesome tree in Hastie Lake.

Heading for the Lizards.

The last 10%, coming in at 7:03 a.m. Once again, my co-instructor and I placed a friendly wager as to the arrival time of the team, and once again my guess was off by mere minutes. Katie hit it right on the mark. 

"Fetch aft the rum!"

"Savannah's called the 'Hostess City of the South,' you know. That's because we've always been a 

party town. We love company. We always have. I suppose that comes from being a port city and having played host to people from far-away places for so long. Life in Savannah was always easier than it was out on the plantations. Savannah was a city of rich cotton traders, who lived in elegant houses within strolling distance of one another. Parties became a way of life, and it's made a difference. We're not at all like the rest of Georgia. We have a saying: If you go to Atlanta, the first question people ask you is, 'What's your business?' In Macon they ask, 'Where do you go to church?' In Augusta they ask your grandmother's maiden name. But in Savannah the first question people ask you is 'What would you like to drink?'"

-Mary Harty

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Roses made from corn husks. 

Tall ships. We actually saw these ships a few days ago in Fernandina. 

Speaking of ships, we had dinner at the Pirate House. During our tour of the rum cellar, we learned about how sailors were acquired. They would get nice and drunk and then crewmen would knock them on the head, drag them downstairs (or throw them down the trapdoor) and sneak them out through a tunnel leading to the river. This tunnel was specially designed to sneak rum in to the Pirates House, and into the city (prohibition, you know), but it did double duty to snatch unsuspecting young men and turn them into sailors. Which they would realize when they woke up the next morning aboard a ship, heading across the ocean. 

 

Chipewa Park. It was here that parts of Forrest Gump were filmed (when he's waiting for the bus and telling his story). It was also here that I took a nap on a park bench while my mom shopped nearby. It was a wonderful, restful hour of my life, disturbed only by a local woman in a wheelchair yelling "Is she breathing? Is she bleeding? Call an ambulance!" I turned over, stretched, and assured her that I was fine.