What would we do without you?
Rick Pressl shows our leaves who's boss.
As I was thinking about this post yesterday, there were about fifteen elementary school students learning about musk turtles downstairs in the Nature Center. They had the day off from school, so they spent the morning out of the rain with Tanya and Rich and a couple of teen helpers.
Yesterday’s weather was a far cry from the brisk, sunny day we had for the Peapack-Gladstone Green Community Festival last Saturday. I had the good fortune of having four volunteers help me out that day. My first arrival rearranged our table in a way I hadn’t thought of before; the second person arrived and immediately turned around to get something I’d forgotten at the Nature Center. She and my third helper seemed to know every other person walking by, and my fourth chatted happily with our visitors, handing out trail maps as the light faded and the day grew cold. He also helped us pack up all of our heavy boxes of gear.
Having people help out at these events always makes them more fun, but it also serves an even more important purpose–they all bring themselves to these events: their personalities, their talents, their connections to their community. All of that makes Schiff a dynamic, fun place to be. It draws people to us–new people–making it even more dynamic and fun. It’s a cycle that happily feeds on itself.
This good cheer isn’t limited to community festivals–it happens right here at Schiff, too. This past Monday, one of our volunteers came by and cleared leaves from the parking area, while two others helped out inside; yesterday, another volunteer cleaned up our native plant garden. Today, we have high school students helping out with the younger kids downstairs, and in a couple of weeks I’m going to be graced with the presence of a group of people who pretend not to mind stuffing envelopes. Some of our volunteer projects actually help the volunteers, too. They learn about themselves, discover talents they never explored, find themselves enjoying something new and incorporating it into their daily lives.
The point is, we have fantastic volunteers here at Schiff. They help out in obvious ways, but they also help out in ways I didn’t even realize a person could be useful. They haul rocks, dig holes, file, lead hikes, rewire the lights, paint, discover new plants, teach yoga, sing songs, make signs, march in parades, stand out in the cold, and so much more. There’s also one more thing they all do a whole lot of–they laugh. They laugh a lot. That’s probably their greatest talent, if you ask me. We can teach them the rest if we need to.
Rachel Daley gets a hug from a grateful, well-fed corn snake.
We’re organizing a little potluck appreciation dinner for all of them later this month and the guest list is nearly 100 names long. That’s right: One hundred people. However, just because we have a volunteer crew that rivals the population of some small towns, we’d gladly welcome more. We always need more. We need their talent and their great ideas, their time and their good cheer. There is always something else to do around here, and we never turn down a good laugh.
