My First Day at NOC

Hey guys! My name is John Puckett, and I’ll be working as a Marketing Intern for the rest of the summer here at NOC. Let me just start off by saying, wow, this place is beautiful. I just got in yesterday afternoon, and I’m already having a blast.

Yesterday, after I filled out the exciting W9 tax forms, I went over to “Stone House” – the building where I’m working – and met some of my coworkers. The three people I’m working with directly in the marketing department are Barbara, Hannah, and Charles, all of whom seem like really interesting, fun, life-loving people. I definitely won’t get bored at work.

From what Charles described to me, a large portion of my job will involve “gathering content” for NOC (aka taking pictures and video of rafters on 6 of the 7 rivers). In order to take these photos I will obviously need to be at each of the rivers, so as an unfortunate side effect of the job, I’ll need to go rafting all the time… Bummer ;-)

After I left the Stone House yesterday, I wanted to experience the river myself, so I drove upstream a little, parked on the side of the road, and hopped across some rocks so I could sit with my feet in the Nantahala. Wow, that water is cold! It felt so nice sitting there with my shoes off, cool mountain air sweeping off the river and hitting my face. I had my camera with me so I started taking some pictures of the small waterfalls, the contrast between shadow and light on the trees lining the river, and other things in nature when a group of NOC rafters floated by. I was amazed. This is an activity that I will be doing anyway in my free time (nature photography). How sweet is that?!















Chillin' with my feet in the Nantahala
















Mossy Waterfall

All in all, this internship seems like it will be an amazing opportunity for me to do what I love, learn about the marketing side of business, explore the field of river sports, and have awesome adventures all along the way. Nice to meet y’all!

-John