Excitement
When thinking of ideas of exploration and the excitement of exploration was expanded on by Sara when she would hiked around her grandfather’s property by
“go[ing] back there, climb the trees, and just kind of explore around and see what we could find. And it was just so, like, great to be in the forest and like getting away from everything.”
Sara
Regarding the Chestnut, Sara expressed how here grandfather was
Sara,
click text to visit interview
The excitement from her grandfather and the exploration of the land has partially continued her work towards finding and developing a blight resistant Chestnut tree and subsequently planting the trees in honour of her grandfather (overlapping with other emotional ecologies mentioned previously of love). Further, Savannah, through volunteering with the American Chestnut Foundation, has been instilling excitement into other people by
“trying to get kids excited to learn about Chestnuts …that was like my thing”
Savannah,
click text to visit interview
The excitement is rendered political when considered the American Chestnut Foundations’ interests in restoring the Chestnut as they require individuals to be excited for the continuation of their mission through securing donations and membership. Excitement was also illustrated when attending a botanical-focused hike in Appalachia and the excitement during the search for saplings
Among many other exciting moments of finding certain species of plants, the first moment when someone spotted a Chestnut sapling, everyone gathered around the individual to investigate the presence or absence of the Blight, what condition the sapling was in, and if there were others around. This highlights the intensity of the Blight’s presence in Appalachian minds as the hikers’ first thought was to look for the fungus, but also enchantment with wanting to find other Chestnuts living with the individual found.
