Saylorville Lake – Sunny 75 Degrees
All but two couples who will live in volunteer village with us this summer have arrived. We keep missing the new couple who arrived Sunday. All we know about them is the job they are filling, their first names and the fact that they have Missouri tags on their vehicles. We'll make it a point to meet them at tomorrows meeting. Bob and Janice, a delightful couple who we were next to last summer, will be here in June and another new person will take up residence beside us in a couple of weeks. We have one village happy hour under our belt and it’s starting to feel like a little neighborhood now that the weather is nice and everyone is using their patios as a family room, complete with fireplace aka fire ring.
This is the Iowa that makes being from here so great. Green and lush. Warm days with cool nights. The gulf humidity has not yet arrived and the insects have not hatched. We will have our formal volunteer orientation tomorrow morning. There, we will re-connect with volunteers who live in other areas of the park and new volunteers that we will not work with directly or live near but will share a common bond. It will be the official welcome from the Rangers and a discussion about expectations, both theirs and ours.
It’s a strange feeling, returning to a previous volunteer location. I wrote a post last summer about the strangeness of being a guest in your old life. The same dynamic exists when you arrive a location as a returning volunteer. In our absence, business as usual has taken place. Vision and projects have evolved and we will slip back into the mesh, to help realize this seasons’ objectives. It’s reminiscent of the double-dutch jump rope games we played in grade school. The ropes twirl and people run through with perfect timing. You arrive at the game and take a moment to orient yourself then jump right in with the others. Let the season begin!
Until tomorrow…
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