Katy Baron: Living off the Peak

Summer 2008: The longest six weeks I’ve ever spent living in a tent. The only time I’ve ever slept with so many layers of clothing on because of the 30 degree weather at night. And the year I celebrated my 23rd birthday at 11,500 feet. I really came to appreciate nature.

For my third round during NCCC Denver, I was fortunate to get my top-pick project, which I knew would include intense camping. In NCCC Denver, you spend the first two rounds with your original team. The third round—the “shuffle” round—is great because it is shorter, you get a break from your original Ameri-family, and you get to work with different Corps members within your unit.

In my shuffle round, I worked for the Rocky Mountain Field Institute (RMFI) on two different projects in two different Colorado locations. For our first, and my favorite, project we lived and camped right off the Pike’s Peak Highway at 11,500 feet. Our sponsors were Eric and Bruce, and they were so helpful and fun to get to know. Here was a typical day on the mountain: wake up by 5:45 am Monday–Friday, do group stretches at 6:30, hike up the mountain to our work site by 7:00—it was 30 degrees at dawn and 70 degrees by 10:00 am—work until 3:00 pm, hike back to our campsite, cook dinner, and go to bed by 9:00.

During our experience with RMFI we learned that storm-water runoff from the unpaved highway had been washed down unto unprotected slopes and had resulted in the creation of over 120 gullies. As a result, the streams, wetlands, and reservoirs within the watershed have been severely affected by sediment. Our project consisted of the first attempt to restore one of these gullies. We began filling the gully with rocks in order to decrease the velocity of the water from the storms and thus saving the wetlands from being destroyed by erosion. In three weeks we were able to lift more than sixty tons of rocks with only thirteen people, and all our hard work was successful! I have never seen a middle-aged man dance so much.

Now although most of our day was spent moving four-hundred-pound rocks in groups or hand brigading rocks from one person to another, we still managed to spark up the funniest conversations. You can imagine how silly a team can get after moving rocks from one place to another for eight hours every day! However, I loved it because we had such an amazing view, we were getting a great work out, and we were actually making a difference and restoring nature. We also went on amazing hikes with our sponsor Eric, ran into two rattle snakes (no one got bit), and made friends with a family of deer who liked to circle our campsite when we cooked dinner. No bears—yay! I truly enjoyed this opportunity because it took me away from the materialistic world in which we live and allowed me to appreciate nature. I really felt like I was able to bond with my teammates through this experience.

Bevin Callan: A Room with a View

Volunteering with AmeriCorps changes your life. What you experience, accomplish, and endure during your year of service cannot be taken away. Isn’t that awesome?

The AmeriCorps program I participated in was the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC). I was at the Southeast Campus when it was still located in Charleston, South Carolina. For those who are not familiar, NCCC sets you up in a “team” of roughly eleven people to travel around the region in a fifteen-passenger van, doing four to six projects over the course of a ten-month term of service. Projects focus on public safety, the environment, disaster relief, education, and unmet basic human needs. My second project took place at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH) in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Every member of my team was assigned to different wards of the hospital based on need and interest. I volunteered to work in the ICU, specifically the Cardiovascular ICU. There were many people who touched me when I worked in the ward, but when I think back, there are two young men specifically who stand out. For the purposes of this post, I’ll call then Jay and Yu. Jay was twenty-three years old, the oldest patient in the Cardiovascular ICU. He had been a patient of the hospital since he was a small child, and the hospital continued to treat him as he got older. Yu was thirteen years old and from Japan. He had been flown to the Arkansas Children’s Hospital for the high level of care that was internationally renowned.

Jay and Yu both had congestive heart failure and were in desperate need of transplants, but in the Cardiovascular ICU they were the “big kids.” The majority of the kids in the ward were under four years old, and although Jay and Yu were scared too, they tried to make the younger kids more comfortable. Many days, I would come to the Cardiovascular ICU and find Jay or Yu playing with the other kids either in their own rooms or in the kids’ playroom. In my second week at the hospital, Jay and Yu had a great idea: “Can we paint the playroom so that it looks like the outside?”

The playroom in the Cardiovascular ICU was separated from the rest of the hospital, because the immune systems of these patients were especially fragile. Unfortunately, the ward was in the interior of the hospital, so there were no windows for the kids to look out of in their playroom. Jay, Yu, and I asked for permission to paint the playroom, and it was granted. Over the next week we painted the walls all the way around the playroom. We painted an ocean with fish, a field, trees, sneaky cats, and birds playing instruments in the trees. It was fun—a group project—and many of the patients, with their families, got involved. Even if they didn’t feel up to participating, patients would want to come in and watch us paint. They might not have known what they were doing at the time, but Jay and Yu had found a way to bring the Cardiovascular ICU community together.

The project opened the doors to new friendships for a lot of the kids and their families. Typically, the patients had stayed closed up in their rooms because they didn’t feel well enough to go to the playroom, and their parents didn’t get the chance to mingle. In all the excitement around painting the playroom, more patients (and their parents) got the opportunity to meet each other. Once the playroom was finished, I found more kids and their parents not only playing together in the playroom but also hanging out more in each other’s rooms.

Jay and Yu found a way to make a scary situation more comfortable. Their great idea brought with it a positive energy, making the unit a happy and carefree environment. I was not able to keep tabs on my patients after my project ended, but I know that whatever directions their lives took, Jay and Yu had a profound impact on the lives of those children.

Patti Kurtz: Katrina Time

In the summer of 2007, I participated in a then-pilot-program with AmeriCorps*National Civilian Community Corps called “Summer of Service” in New Orleans. Modeled after the *NCCC program, Summer of Service allowed us to serve as leaders for groups of students age fourteen to sixteen to complete a three-week service program. We lived at Xavier University with the participants and followed many of the norms in our program: uniforms (with shirts tucked in!), physical training, team building, and community service projects were required of all the students.

Throughout the program, communicating with them was a challenge. They were at the age of rebellion and didn’t like listening to authority figures. This was the first experience for many of them in a job-like environment. And community service isn’t always “fun.” Imagine telling a group of teenagers that they were going to walk through vacant land and pick up trash for four hours straight. It wasn’t a glorious job, but someone had to do it.

One day we went to an area school to plant new trees and flowers at the entrance of the building. About an hour into the task, we were hit with torrential downpour and had to head inside to wait out the storm. So, I did what I had to do, and I made up a game to keep them entertained!

The game was called “Categories” (not original, I know). We sat in a circle and each person took a turn choosing a category. Then everyone else gave an answer that fell within that category. We started off easy, with categories such as “favorite music” or “favorite subject in school.” Then, one girl in the group said “worst day in your life” as a category.

As each person went around the circle and took their turn, they shared an experience they had had during the time of the hurricanes, known to them as “Katrina time.” They told the group about walking their grandma through the floodwaters to get to safety or about staying in their house as they hoped and waited for the storm to pass. Every single one of them had a story to share about Hurricanes Katrina and Rita that they remembered as the worst day in their lives.

Then something beautiful happened. The next person in the circle chose the category “best day in your life.” This time, when each student responded, almost every single one of them shared a story about the same era, “Katrina time.” They told stories about making new friends in a new city when they had to relocate, about what they felt the day they returned to New Orleans, and about what it was like to see their family and friends for the first time after being separated from them for months.

I was blown away by their honesty and ability to talk so openly about what we know as one of the greatest tragedies to happen to a U.S. community. To them, it wasn’t political, it was personal. It was a part of who they were and identified an entire chapter of their life.

Even though the three weeks with those students may have been the most difficult project for me in my year in AmeriCorps*NCCC, it was an experience that reminded me why I was in AmeriCorps, what we could do to help, and how the community was greatly affected by the storms.