There’s always something new to learn and experience at our volunteer jobs. Usually the learning is obvious: we have to know facts and stories about the place, or the people, or the natural areas. We have to study, review, maybe take some training tests, so that we can share our new knowledge.
But this job is none of that for me.
Because I’m not going into the caves, I haven’t needed to learn about stalactites and stalagmites. Instead, this job is all about learning to work with people, with schedules, with changes in the schedule. And being flexible, and understanding, and going with the flow.
Marika says it’s my Welcome to the Real World class.
And in so many ways, she’s right. For thirty two years I worked for, and with, and by myself as a private computer trainer. So everything was done my way, on my time line, and it was always well executed. And even when I had a conflict, I found ways to work it out.
But now, I’m working with different personalities, different levels of abilities and skills, and all kinds of communication skills and non-skills.
For me, engaging with people is the best part of these gigs. And, while I really enjoy driving the tram, my favorite job is working at the gatehouse, greeting people, chatting, sharing some great eye contact and good mojo.
But for the first few weeks, the woman I had to work with completely ruined the experience for me. We butted heads on everything, each of us thinking we were right. She had a lot of senior moments, was bossy and a complainer, and a blatant bigot.
At first I tried to be compassionate, to understand that she needed to do SOMETHING, because her husband drives the tram. And if she doesn’t have this, what does she have.
But then we’d have another confrontation, and I’d have to take a walk around the gatehouse to let it go and not let her get the best of me. Marika said the woman just likes to stir it up with me, but I’m not interested in that kind of engagement.
I talked with my supervisor about working with her, and said I could work one day a week with her if I have to, but two is too much, and he said he understood.
Meanwhile, I kept wondering why she was in my life. Was it about true radical compassion? Was it something about my Dad, who is the same age?
Or maybe it wasn’t about me at all. Maybe I was there to show her a different way. Because the next day, I heard her talking with some visitors, and she had changed up her usual monotone ramble with a little lighter tone, and even laughed with them! And she offered someone a dog cookie, after telling me how much she hates dogs because they pee on her rocks.
I haven’t had to work with her since then. I do say hello when I see her in the break room, but we don’t make small talk, and I’m fine with that. Because there are other co-workers here who I do enjoy talking with.
We’ve gone out to dinner with our next door neighbors several times, and we were invited to another couple’s RV for dinner a few weeks ago. We enjoyed a fun night of dominoes with our friends from Cape Blanco who are also volunteering here, and Marika went to a Super Bowl party with many of the park rangers. And I’m going out for lunch with a neighbor next week.
And our dear friends from Phoenix came for a visit. They stayed in one of the heated cabins in the campground, so we had room to hang out and play games. We all took a day trip to St. David for a walk around, and explored the ghost town of Fairbank, where the original school building is now a museum.
And we visited the nearby Forever Home Donkey Sanctuary where more than two dozen donkeys have a safe and nurturing home. We fed them timothy seed pellets as we heard their stories, then mingled with them out in the yard. My favorite was a mammoth donkey who was as tall as a moose.
It’s been colder here than we expected it to be, because we are at 4600′ elevation. Last month we had a dusting of snow, and last week it went down to 21° at night and our water line froze. The heated hose worked, but we neglected to wrap the actual valve, so the exposed pipes did freeze. Once the sun came up, I stood outside with the blow dryer aimed at the pipes and everything thawed. We wrapped the pipes the next night and we did have water in the morning.
I am still loving the ever changing clouds in the sky. This part of Arizona is called the Sky Islands, and, when the clouds hang below the tops of the surrounding mountain ranges, it really does look like islands the sky.
But as beautiful as the landscape is, as fun as the volunteering jobs are, and as nice as our co-workers are, I still miss a deeper level of community. I miss my weekly yoga class. I miss dinners and conversations with my dear friends. And I miss making art, and going thrift storing and yard sale-ing to find cool materials, and having shelves and spaces to display and enjoy my finds.
When I shared this with Marika, she suggested I work in miniature. What a great idea! Because I do have ziploc bags filled with small things that I have collected since we began this journey. So yesterday, I gathered all of my trinkets and objects, found the smaller bag with single earrings, and added the fishing bobbers and odd bottle caps from my catch-all shelf. Now I can begin looking for small, interesting containers at the local thrift stores and begin to tell some new stories.
It’s a way to shift my attention from what I’m missing, back to what I DO have, what IS working, what I CAN change. And, at the same time, maintain the balance between here and what’s next.
I forgot how dry the Arizona desert is in the winter. Last week we had several days of eleven percent humidity. With wind. I’ve been using a nasal spray and staying indoors as much as possible with the humidifier on to protect my sinuses, but the insides of my nose are raw. My hands are rough, and my skin is dry, no matter how much water I drink, or how many times I apply lotion.
So I’ve been looking at pictures of the campground and the beach on the Oregon Coast where we’ll be volunteering this summer, reminding my body that we’ll be in that moist, green, healing climate soon.
And then I look up from my computer screen, to the vista out the window where I am, right here, right now. I revel in the shades of grays against a peek of blue, and the spaceship clouds flying by. And I am content.
