Reilly and I are finally going to Craggy Gardens today! Working together on the project proposal yesterday was incredibly exciting in light of our trip. It has felt like spring for the past few days and I am so looking forward to visiting Craggy to explore and enjoy the sunshine.
In creating our project site, we hope to focus most of our work into sharing a narrative of Craggy Garden that weaves human stories about Craggy into the story of Craggy’s landscape. By sharing this narrative of Craggy Gardens, I hope that we will explore much of what we have discussed in class about re-envisioning the stories we tell about landscapes and people’s sense of place within those stories. I am looking forward to approaching this through the perspective of change, both from urban areas to Craggy Gardens (via the Parkway) and in time through seasonal change and from the 20th to the 21st century.
Reilly and I plan to share most of the responsibility of the project, including collecting archival documents, building our website and using digital tools. We both hope to research the ecosystem around Craggy together, with Reilly researching hemlock tree restoration while I focus on American chestnuts. We have already found information about hemlock trees in the UNCA archives, but will do more digging to see if there is archival information about chestnuts. Additionally, Reilly will focus on documenting the transition from Asheville to Craggy while I document the transition from winter to spring through wildflower blooms. I am so excited that will we be traveling to Craggy Gardens with enough regularity that we will be able to document that change.
Here is the timeline of our project:
March 1 － Contracts due
March 2 － Collect archival documents, meet with the Jackie Holt, Pack Memorial Library, BRP Forest Service, UNCA archives and UNCA Media Design Lab
March 8 － Assignment 5 (integrate writing with a digital tool to convey an aspect of Craggy Gardens)
March 9 － Digital tools (build on Assignment 5 by using other digital tools to begin to build the project website)
March 18 － Visiting Craggy Gardens (have visited Craggy Gardens during the day and night to complete nature writing)
March 27 － Rough draft (complete rough draft of project website)
March 28 – April 16 － Visit Craggy Gardens (visit Craggy Gardens to continue to document the site through writing and multimedia tools)
April 17 － Final version (complete final version of project website)