Volunteer Week at Chattanooga's Audubon Acres: A Sierra Club Service Outing

Sixteen of us from around the country met in Chattanooga and spent Sunday through Sunday working and sightseeing in lovely Chattanooga. Audubon Acres has its headquarters at the 130 acre Elise Chapin Wildlife Sanctuary which offers a rich diversity of plant and animal life as well as five miles of hiking trails through the woods on both sides of South Chickamaugua Creek.

Below is the Spring Frog Cabin which is believed to have been built in the mid-1700s on a prominent knoll on the original farm's property. It was built with Native construction techniques and is named for its owner, Spring Frog, a Cherokee naturalist whose portrait is above the fireplace mantel two photos below.

The Cherokee were forced to leave the land ("Trail of Tears") and eventually the cabin became the family home where Robert Sparks Walker was born and raised. He became an accomplished  author, naturalist, teacher, lawyer, journalist, and publisher and later founded this local chapter of the Audubon Society and saw that his family's farm became a wildlife sanctuary and eventually Audubon Acres.

We were invited into the cabin and given the history of both the cabin and the Walker family by Lynn Grabowski, the knowledgable educational director of Audubon Acres. Some of our volunteers spent hours in here cleaning and tidying up both levels of the home. The volunteers also beautifully trimmed all the bushes around the structures on the property.

Kyle Simpson, the skilled and personable executive director of Audubon Acres, is the only employee. Still, the facility thrives thanks to Kyle recruiting and directing a large and faithful volunteer base, and our crew of Sierra Club volunteers enthusiastically pitched in to help with whatever chores needed to be done.  For example, the five miles of trails have to be regularly checked for fallen limbs and overgrowth, so that was one of our first assignments as seen below.

A primary revenue generator for the non-profit Audubon Acres is their annual Halloween "Acres of Darkness Haunted Woods Walk," and preparations were already underway for that event, so we assisted in building "sets" to be used as building facades in the woods. The frames of the sets were assembled on the field...

... then carried into position in the woods...

...along with the siding material which was then nailed to the frames...

...and after the siding was attached, the set was fastened to the trees, ready for the finishing touches to be applied by the local volunteers over the next few months.

A 2017 Tennessee law allows property owners to mark their land to prohibit trespassing without using signs. A  purple vertical stripe three to five feet above ground is now sufficient to warn trespassers off, and several of us spent hours bushwhacking through the underbrush surrounding Audubon Acres, spray painting purple stripes on trees...

We also removed a decrepit old fence line and installed an enormous steel pipe which will support a metal gate they can open to have occasional access to the willing neighbor's field for overflow parking during well-attended events. We wrestled with this four-person gas-powered auger in order to dig the six-foot deep hole...

...then plumbed the pole to vertical, and set it in concrete. It's not going anywhere now and will support the heavy gate when it is installed!

As Sierra Club members, we are quite interested in learning more about ecology and the environment, so several local experts were recruited to present educational/informative sessions to our group. Below, Jim Quinn demonstrates the problem of hemlock tree infestation by the invasive wooly adelegid bug which will devastate the local hemlock tree population if massive efforts are not mustered to stop its spread. Diseased trees are identified, treated with a chemical, and tagged as having been treated. It is a laborious process but necessary to prevent the complete eradication of the species in this area.

The importance of wetlands was emphasized by prominent local ecologist Dr. Bill Phillips of Envision Ecology, who explained the mitigation, repair, and construction of wetlands that were undertaken when the Volkswagen auto plant acquired its massive Chattanooga property and began planning the factory's construction. Bill and his employees worked tirelessly for several years, studying the proposed site and analyzing its assets and problems. Then with Volkswagen's wholehearted support and funding, they devised a plan to save, repair, and where appropriate, replace the fragile areas damaged by prior poor practices. The 940 acre plant is now operating and abuts a healthy, beautiful nature park which is home to numerous species of plants and animals, all thriving amidst 18,000 feet of new stream channels, meadows, and wetlands. Bill is a local who grew up in the area and was motivated, inspired, and mentored by Robert Sparks Walker right on the Audubon Acres property! 

Sunny Montgomery took us down to the creek and explained how she regularly performs water quality measurement in South Chickamaugua Creek. The quantity and variety of larvae in the water indicates the quality of the water, so she showed us how she collects samples...

...by having some of our our crew members shuffle their feet along the creek bottom to drive sentiment and tiny critters into the net she is holding...

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...and then she identifies the larvae found in the net...

...and records the information.

Then our crew gathered on the swinging bridge over the creek for a group photo...

We also enjoyed a talk regarding the raptor rehabilitation efforts employed by Happinest Wildlife Rehabilitation and Rescue led by Alix Parks. Evidence of the success of their efforts is when animals are deemed ready for release back to the wild...

...and our session concluded with the release of a red-tailed hawk they named "Biter" seen here...

Then Sunny released Biter back to the wild after her three months of rehab...

...and Biter successfully flew to a nearby branch where she remained for an hour or so before flying off, hopefully to find her mate again...

Lynn Grabowski, the educational director at Audubon Acres, also spoke to us about their huge collection of replica bird eggs of over 1200 species! All were hand sculpted of clay by C.E. Blevins over a period of 15 years and are perfectly accurate depictions of the actual bird eggs. The collection also includes several dozen bird nests. This "Avian Jewels" collection is available to the public for viewing.

It wasn't all work and education, though. Our trip fell during the week of the great solar eclipse of 2017, and Chattanooga was within the zone of totality, so we were driven to our trip leader's mountaintop neighborhood where we joined her friendly neighbors for a potluck lunch and the eclipse viewing party. Here's the crew anticipating the start of the eclipse, all with our eclipse glasses on to protect the eyes, of course!

...and here it is nearing totality...

...and then totality! (I'm not sure what created the red artifacts around the corona, but other photos had the same red dots.)

We also spent a day in Chattanooga, visiting both buildings (River and Ocean) of the marvelous Chattanooga Aquarium...

...and also rode on the aquarium's modern jet-catamaran boat called the River Gorge Explorer, which sped us at nearly 50 mph to the 26 mile long Tennessee River Gorge which includes over 27,000 acres of protected lands.

Audubon Acres is bisected by South Chickamaugua Creek which makes a mile-long, U-shaped loop through the property, and one morning the group tubed the creek. Great fun, and a nice way to cool off on a 90 degree day!

Here we go under the swinging bridge that gets hikers to the trails across the creek...

At one point, I picked up a hitchhiker that briefly accompanied us on our float trip...

Another of our work assignments was to kayak the creek and remove all the debris and trash we could find. It was tough work at times but also a lot of fun being on the water again...

Lots of glass and plastic bottles and aluminum cans were found, as well as several car tires, a huge truck inner tube, and even this highway sign for US 411...

Here is one of the loads of trash we removed from the creek...

A tree had fallen leaving obstructing branches and foliage, so a crew loaded it all on the wagon and then unloaded it in an out-of-the-way location.

The wagon was also used on the last day to take us on a "hayless" hay ride down a bumpy trail...

...and across the creek at a ford...

...and up to the site of a prehistoric Napochie Indian village now called Little Owl Village. The site was excavated by University of Tennessee-Chattanooga archaeologists from 1992 to 1996.

Here's our stalwart and enthusiastic crew of volunteers...

Front row (l to r): Emily, Cheryl, Denise, Debra, Shelly, and Mary K.

Back row: Barbara E., Judy, Pat, Sharon, Mary J., Susie, Barb F., Chuck, Kathleen, and Ann

Grateful thanks go out to director Kyle and board member Sunny for their leadership...

And special thanks to our dedicated and affable leaders, Cheryl and Mary K. This was the first run for this program, and their preparation, planning, and direction made it a successful and fruitful experience for all. We accomplished far more than had been expected and all had a good time in the process.

Photos from the week can be viewed and downloaded here

A video of our Tennessee River Gorge boat tour is here.

Sierra Club Outings can be viewed here.