The perspective part is what's key here. This blog is written by four different interns, and when we work in a group, we all share different takeaways; we remember different victories, different trials, nettles of pride and determination with each expedition. Thusly, when combined, I suspect we make a quirky sense of a whole. Today's post is a combination of perspectives.
Today, we took our canoes down the French Broad River to collect garbage left by litterers. After our very exciting adventure of collecting nets, and tires, and cans, and bottles, we made our way back up the French Broad. After five minutes of realizing that paddling wasn't taking us anywhere up the current, it was decided we'd walk the canoes up the rest of the way until we crossed back to the office on the other side. I've never been so tired in my life. --Sami
Today, Eric tasked us with cleaning a tributary of the French Broad just downstream from our new offices; Emma creek. We set off from the boat launch that we'd built the day before and set off. We landed on the debris caught on the blocked trestle (dead possum, anyone?) before attenting to our primary project. All of this was relatively routine and uneventful; the real challenge came when we tried to turn around and make our way back upstream.
After nearly flipping on the first rapid at the mouth of Emma, we pulled our boats to the bank and tried to approach the problem by tugging the boats along the edge of the water. We eventually had to combine all four of us to one boat or bail water out after nearly capsizing. After a strenuous hour and a half, we finally reach the end of the stretch that had been a ten minute float downstream, and hauled our laden boats onto the launch where we'd begun.
And the day was barely half over. --Connor S.
Personally, I think Eric gets a kick out of shaping us interns by sending us on projects that stick us between a rock and a hard place, knowing full well we can probably handle it. River cleanups I know; wear chackos, be prepared to get wet, and rip as much trash out of the river as we can to fill our canoes. Usually, that's pretty straightforward; we just float on downstream. Today not so much.
The four of us pushed off from our beach at the office and floated for the Norfolk Southern trestle south of us; Styrofoam, bottles, a tube (still good enough for a float), and a dead possum that we didn't know what to do with. After that, we hauled out tires and bumped over a rapid into Emma, where we started hauling out tire shingles, tires screwed to what was left of an old bridge, pieces of a pipe, pliwood, and evermore tires.
Walking upstream is hard enough when the French Broad is low; it's rocky, with sandbars, undercurrents, and random dropoffs, not to mention the snapping turtles we saw sliding into the water as we scrambled up the side. We ducked under trees, spiders crawling in our hair and and floundered in the deep ends with the canoes floating full of trash behind us. Getting past the rapid almost flipped one of our boats, and I had to backtrack to help them haul it through the first bit.
Before we started, we had well established the trestle was a big problem; how do we get past fast flowing water between bridge supports if we can't get past a rapid three inches tall? The answer lies in engineers. When they built the bridge, they left a ledge about three inches wide three and a half feet underwater, out of sight. That's how we got past the bridge; we couldn't walk between the supports because the water had carved out the bottom, but one of us standing in front on that three inch walkway and another pushing behind with two paddling, we hauled through those rapids, dragged over a rock, beneath a sleeping bag, over a deep end, and then we cut across back to our beach.
I love engineers, but walking upstream is a trip either way. --Julia
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