Everlasting Marks

Sometimes I post items on facebook or here about 'working on the farm' or more often, 'pounding tires.' These are actually slang terms for illicit drug use. No, not really. These are things related to a nonprofit group I joined called Everlasting Marks. This is an relatively new organization with the stated intent:

To promote cultural understanding and environmental awareness through service learning programs involving teens in the hands on construction of sustainable projects that benefit the community.

But the ultimate vision of the nonprofit goes beyond community boundaries:

While Everlasting marks is currently working locally in Arizona, the long term vision is to create international youth camps in which teens will work for and with a community to construct a sustainable build for the community.

By bringing teens of different cultures together through kids’ camps we offer them the opportunity to experience what other parts of the world are actually like. By doing so, we hope to create more compassionate, understanding and confident youth, who in turn will leave a positive mark on our world.

I got involved with it through its founder, Jaime Collins, one of my classmates from ASU architecture. When we were all in Buenos Aires, I shared an apartment with her and another classmate. The focus of our semester long studio was the street children and the deplorable urban conditions in which they lived, and this in turn, inspired her to develop this nonprofit.

I got involved because I think that sustainability and community working with teens are both vital causes. Additionally, for purely selfish reasons, I wanted to learn more in a physical way about different types of building sustainably, and also to develop my ability to coordinate and lead groups.

What this really means is that about every other week, I make the trek out to Superstition Farms, who donated the land for the project, and I lead small groups of kids in building a tire wall. This is pretty intense work, although I am slowly getting better at it. I work from morning until early afternoon, pick up some fresh dairy from the farm store, and head home to a shower.

Making a tire wall is a lot of work. The basic concept is pretty simple, pack, pound, and level. You start by laying a piece of cardboard in the center to keep the dirt inside the tire, and then fill the tire with dirt. Then, you pull up the inside rim of the tire and start packing dirt in as much as you can. When the tire is so full, you can't push any more dirt into the rims, you pick up a sledgehammer and start pounding, striking at an angle to compact the dirt into the rims. When the entire tire looks overstuffed and ready to burst, then you level it.

By level it, I mean you take a level and turn the level around at various positions across the tire to make sure the top of the tire is as level as possible, and that it matches the level of the tire next to it. It's tricky, frustrating work, since the tire sends to take on a sagging donut shape which makes the top of it a geometric saddle. To raise up the height, just takes more pounding. When its finally done, these tires weigh about 200 pounds each and become structural elements. I can tell you, that's a lot of pounding and a lot of dirt.