By Cliff White 

Staff Writer

Limington’s Dylan Watters had never been on a plane before February. 

Since joining the AmeriCorps National Civilian Conservation Corps (NCCC), Watters says his first flight – to Denver, and paid for by the volunteer program – was just the beginning of the adventure of a lifetime.

“I’m from a small town, and I’ve never really spent a long time away from home before. It’s taken some adjustment to get used to my life in AmeriCorps. But now that I’m more settled in, I’m starting to realize what an amazing experience this is,” Watters says, during a telephone interview from his volunteer site in Tennessee.

AmeriCorps is a network of national service programs affiliated with the federal government, created by a 1993 act of Congress and based on the model of the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps. AmeriCorps provides grants and volunteers organized to provide community service on projects improving education, health, public safety and the environment around the country. 

AmeriCorps’ NCCC program, for volunteers between the ages of 18 and 24, represents an 11-month commitment in which participants must donate at least 1,700 hours to community service. In exchange, those who complete the program’s requirements receive a $4,725 education grant to pay for college.

Watters, 19, who graduated from Bonny Eagle High School last spring, says his choice to volunteer with AmeriCorps was brought on in part by his inability to come to a decision on what else to do with his future.

“While I eventually want to attend college, I didn’t want to go right away,” Watters says. “I wanted to get a different experience first – a different background which might give me a better perspective on things before I made the jump into college.”

Watters says he found out about AmeriCorps NCCC through his brother Stowell Watters, who found out about the program while volunteering in repair efforts in Buloxi, Miss. soon after Hurricane Katrina. (Stowell Watters is currently a reporter with Mainely Media LLC., the Gazette’s parent company.)

“Stowe was a big influence on me,” Watters says. “He really encouraged me to look outside the box, and explore what other options I had rather than going directly from high school to college. AmeriCorps is a chance to do some good and at the same time have some fun and get out of Maine.”

In August, Watters submitted his application, which included questions about his reasons for joining the program, and later involved a phone interview. When he heard he had been accepted – which he says only happens to one in five applicants – Watters says he was “surprised and very excited.”

“I was really hoping for it,” he says. “I didn’t know what I was going to do if I didn’t get in. I had no back-up plan.”

By Feb. 3, Watters had said goodbye to his family and home, and boarded a plane for Denver. The cabin door was locked, and soon, he was at 30,000 feet, staring out a little oval window at his future.

In Colorado, Watters met up with the program’s 308 other volunteers and began a month of training emphasizing teamwork, leadership development, communication, service learning and certification by the American Red Cross. 

“Actually, the training was pretty boring, to be honest,” Watters says. “A lot of it seemed useless. We were stuck in hot classrooms for hours upon hours – it was kind of annoying.”

At the end of their month in Denver, the volunteers were broken up into four teams of between 70 to 80 volunteers, who were further separated into seven teams of about 10 volunteers. The groups will work and live together for the remainder of the program – 10 months in close quarters. Each team will complete a series of six- to eight-week-long service projects, chosen from applications submitted by a range of community-based organizations, including non-profits, schools, cities and town, national and state parks and Native American tribes.

While 15 teams traveled to the Gulf Coast region to continue hurricane recovery projects, Watters’ team traveled to Great Smoky Mountain National Park on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee. His team got to work on ridding the park of two non-native invasive species – Japanese honeysuckle, which crowds out native plants, and the hemlock wooly adelgid, an insect which infests and destroys native American hemlock trees.

Watters’ team works 7:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, walking throughout the park and spraying chemicals to deal with the problem invaders.  After work, they head back to their cabin, inside of the park cook dinner, and rest until the next day’s labor.  The team receives weekends off, as well as every other Friday.

“We really take advantage of where we are to hike around and see the area,” Watters says. 

Last week, he says his group took an 11-mile hike to the top of Gregory’s Bald, where he says they had a view of the entire park.

“We are in such a beautiful place,” Watters says. “Nice, forested mountains – they actually do have a smokiness to them, this kind of indescribable, weird haze.”

It hasn’t all been easy for Watters. He contracted mononucleosis during his time in Denver, and the doctor who diagnosed him ordered him to stay inactive for a week – his first week on the job in the Smokies.

“It was mostly boring and very frustrating. I really wanted to get out there and start working,” Watters says. “I’m happy that I’ve finally been able to do that.”

Watters says he has enjoyed meeting new people his age from around the country and that he is growing closer with his fellow volunteers, with whom he will spend the next nine months sharing close quarters and a lot of hard labor. He’s not sure where the group is headed in its next rotation, which begins in mid-April, but says he is excited about lies ahead.

“I’m learning something new every day. It’s neat to start learning again,” Watters says. “Every day is fun and I’m looking forward to seeing what the rest of the program holds in store for me.”

Two of Watters’ group members have had to leave the program due to personal reasons so far, and while Watters admits to having felt the pull of home, he doesn’t want to bail on the AmeriCorps early if he can help it. He says he feels he has more to learn and something to prove.

“This is definitely going to help me out in the long run,” Watters says. “It’s a way for me to grow. I’m away from home, from everybody I love, and that’s difficult, but when I’m done – maybe I’ll be a man.”