Full disclosure: What follows is a brazen pitch to volunteer
your time at a park
Full disclosure: What follows is a brazen pitch to volunteer your time at a park. Wait, wait. I can see you backing up, but please don’t shut the door in my face. I know I’m not interrupting dinner or your favorite television show. After all, you’re already reading the paper, so those excuses won’t work.
And, yes, I know all the reasons you can’t do it, but I have reasons why you should. Before I sell you on the benefits, let me try to undermine your objections.
Objection No. 1: “I don’t have the time. I’m just too busy.” This objection is a common one, because most people do live busy lives. After a lot of careful thought, I have concluded that the most truthful answer to this is, “Baloney!”
I realized this was true after listening to a new volunteer introduce himself around the campfire at the annual Ride-Along for new volunteers at Henry Coe State Park last fall. He has two young children and works for a Silicon Valley tech company that demands ridiculous amounts of his time. When he announced to his wife that he wanted to volunteer, she was shocked. “How in the world will you ever find the time?” she asked him. He said, “I will simply take the time. If I don’t, my life will continue to be like a runaway train. Now and then, I need to step off and catch my breath.” Smart fellow. He will have one less “I shoulda” when he looks back on his life.
Objection No. 2: “I don’t know anything about camping, or hiking, or all that nature stuff.” After this same young man explained why he had volunteered despite his busy schedule, he next said that when we all retired to our tents and sleeping bags later that evening, he would be doing so for the first time. He had never camped in his life.
Granted, this young man may possess more wisdom and more zest for life than most of us, but he makes short work of our reasons for not doing things that we otherwise might.
At Henry Coe State Park, the volunteer program has only two time requirements: 50 hours a year and 20 of those hours spent helping people in the visitor center. Even for the busiest of us, 50 hours out of each year’s 8,760 is a manageable commitment.
For the volunteer program at Coe Park, there are no requirements or expectations with regard to experience or knowledge. We need help planning and running special events, maintaining trails and springs, building a Web site, printing publications, and on and on. If you want to volunteer, you will find something you enjoy doing at the park.
How does one describe the rewards? There is the “people part”: I have met so many interesting people in my time as a volunteer, people I certainly would not have met otherwise, and I have been immeasurably enriched by them. Then, there is the “place part”: If you think you’re not the outdoors type, let me put you around the campfire at Pacheco Camp with some Scampi and a glass of wine; or let me plunk you down underneath the Rooster Comb at sunset; or let me take you to the San Antonio Valley when the Tule Elk are grazing. I’m pretty sure almost all of us are the outdoors type.
Well, that’s my best shot. Did it take? A busy life or hard economic times are not an excuse. More than ever, you need a tonic to get by. At Coe Park, we would love to have you. If you are interested, send me an e-mail at [email protected] and I will send you an application. If your heart belongs to another place, volunteer at a park near there.
