University of North Carolina at Asheville Course Project
Katie Caruso and Reilly Strong
Mission Statement
Human and ecological narratives are part of one story. Our mission is to research layers of ecological and human history to construct what William Least Heat-Moon calls a “deep map” of Craggy Gardens. We plan to include five layers in our website, two that describe human narratives (activism and visitation/the Blue Ridge Parkway), and two that detail ecological perspectives (wildflowers and hemlock trees). Asheville is nicknamed “The Land of the Sky”, so our final layer will be be about the sky, and include information about the day and nighttime sky as well as information about flying species native to the Craggy Gardens region. Time permitting, we may create a sixth about mountain topography and landscape, which include information about the Blue Ridge Mountains. We propose this layer hesitantly; if we find that it is too difficult or broad of an undertaking, we will focus our research on the first five pages. Together, these aspects will act as layers within a map of the Craggy Gardens landscape. The function of our website will be to examine how human and ecological stories have unfolded in the single narrative of the landscape of Craggy Gardens.
We envision that the landing page of our website will be a perspective view map of the Craggy Gardens skyline and surrounding mountains. This will provide the foundation for a “deep map” of Craggy Gardens, which the rest of our pages will layer upon. Our 21st-century nature writing will be dispersed throughout the four pages, including our landing page, strengthening our research through messages that only the poetic voice can portray. Our intended audience is our local community, including both the University of North Carolina at Asheville and the greater population of Asheville. We are hoping to have an audience beyond our local community because the mission of our project website is to reimagine human and ecological stories within a single narrative; reimagining human and ecological stories has implications for an audience far beyond our local community.
Tools
We plan to use the theme “Activello” for our WordPress site. This theme is appropriate for our site and is relatively simple, which would focus attention on the content of our site. Links to each of our other pages are also visible from the primary page of our site, allowing users to easily navigate through the layers of our deep map.
On the landing page of our site, we plan to feature a perspective view map of the skyline and the mountains that surround Craggy Gardens. The WordPress plug-in H3P will be used with the map to link to the other pages on our site that represent layers of a deep map. The map on our landing page will be accompanied with nature writing that introduces Craggy Gardens and the concept of a deep map. Each of our layers — wildflowers, hemlock trees, activism, tourism/recreation/weddings/the Parkway and sky — will be placed within their own page on the website. The individual page layers will integrate digital tools with nature writing. As we continue to research Craggy Gardens, we might find that some aspects of these different layers overlap into other layers. For example, wildflowers could be connected to flying pollinators in the sky layer. Such common aspects could be discussed in nature writing to highlight commonalities between different layers.
Photographs, archival documents and videos will be used, along with nature writing, to construct a deep map of Craggy Gardens. Archival documents will play a large role in the pages about historical activism and tourism/recreational uses/Blue Ridge Parkway, and may also be used to a lesser extent in the hemlock and wildflower pages. Photographs can be used on all of the pages, but we envision photographs being used most in our wildflower, hemlock and sky pages; we hope to use night photography so that we can include pictures of stars over Craggy Gardens on our sky page. We also hope to use time-lapse photography to capture growing wildflowers, and publish those videos on Katie’s Youtube account so they can be published on our WordPress site.
Distribution of Labor
We intend to share much of the tasks needed to create our project website because we work best as a team. These tasks will include nature writing, contacting specialists, collecting archival documents and using digital tools to build our site. We will each focus on two pages of our site to make sure that they are completed along with milestone deadlines, but still plan use our combined strength to work on these pages together. We will work together on the sky layer.
Katie: Research wildflowers at Craggy Gardens and create page for the wildflowers layer. Create the tourist/visitor/recreation/Blue Ridge Parkway archival page. Contact Jackie Holt (Blue Ridge Parkway Headquarters) and UNCA archivists.
Reilly: Research Hemlocks and develop the page on the website for that. In charge of the
historical activism page and collecting though archives. Contact Blue Ridge Parkway Forest Service and Pack Memorial Library Archivists. (Will work on the sky page together).
Milestones
I. March 1 － Contracts and Media Design Lab. Contracts due. Have met with the UNCA Media Design Lab and discussed tools to be used on project site including time-lapse photography, night photography, Scene, Story Map and WordPress design.
II. Week of March 9 － Collect archival documents and meet with specialists, visit Craggy Gardens. Have met with Jackie Holt (Blue Ridge Parkway Headquarters), Pack Memorial Library Archivists, Blue Ridge Parkway Forest Service and UNCA archivists. Visit Craggy Gardens and scope out where flowers are and when they will bloom to see if we can capture their blooming on time lapse.
III. Week of March 16 － Spring Break, nature writing and website skeleton. No class. Free writing about Craggy Gardens to be used in different layers of the deep map. Create the skeleton of the website with each page as a layer of the map. Share with Joe and Ken for feedback.
IV. Week of March 23 － Complete skeleton structure of wildflower, hemlock, activism and vistor pages. Incorporate digital tools in wildflower and hemlock pages. Upload archival documents to the historical activism and visitors pages.
V. Week of March 30 － Rough draft, assesment, sky layer. Have visited Craggy Gardens during the day and night to complete nature writing. Incorporate nature writing into land of the sky layer. Complete rough draft of project website.
VI. Week of April 6 － Visit Craggy Gardens. Visit Craggy Gardens to continue to document the site through writing and multimedia tools building our pages. Build our documentation into our website.
VII. Week of April 13 － Website. All efforts into the website! Visit Craggy Gardens if there is time. Finish the layout and uploading archival documents and nature writing onto each page, making sure they appear and function in the best way to present our project.
VIII. Week of April 20 － Final Version. Complete final version of project website by April 17.