Volunteering in nature has rewards, gives sense of meaning to travel
Wanted: Camp hosts to serve one month or more at Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge in southcentral Oregon. Duties: welcoming campers and visitors; sharing information about the area; and light maintenance, repairs and cleanup at campgrounds and restrooms. Applicants should be outdoorsy, outgoing and open to living in a remote setting. (The closest Walmart is about 160 miles away.) Camp or hook up your RV at no cost in exchange for 32 hours of service a week. In your free time, hike amid rugged cliffs and sharp ridges, soak in hot springs and spot wildlife – namely, 3,000-plus pronghorn antelope, along with sage grouse, bighorn sheep and hundreds of other species.
If that sounds tempting, it is, indeed, a real opportunity every year via the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). “It’s one of
globally, based on an international rating system. It also has thrusters that can rotate the vessel in any direction. (This is important when it’s lodged deep in ice.) In terms of speed, it has engines so powerful it can slice through the water at more than 16 knots — uncommonly fast compared with other vessels in the region, Graser said, especially in the infamously rough Drake Passage — giving it more range. Its bow shape helps, too. The front of a ship typically leans forward and has blunt angles that push the water away. However, the bow on the Resolution, dubbed the X-bow, is hooked backward, giving it sharper angles that split the sea. It’s meant to mimic how sea mammals work with the water, which also makes it more fuel-efficient.
“We’re still learning its capabilities, but once we do, we’ll use them to the max,” Verdesoto said of the months-old ship. (Its first sailing was in November.) Though he’s been working in Antarctica for more than 12 years, he still has some bucket-list dreams, such as crossing the Antarctic Circle on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula. It has only been done commercially, he said, on the western side; the area to the east usually saw too much ice. “But, with this vessel, we might be able to do that on an upcoming trip.”
Although Antarctic itineraries are never the same — they’re based on weather forecasts and ice charts, so expedition leaders often plan on the fly — the Resolution’s enhancements open up more opportunities to explore little-visited areas and bring photoseeking travelers closer to glaciers and wildlife, such as albatross, chinstrap penguins, orcas and leopard seals. Each day, passengers could get off the ship at least twice to go kayaking, hiking or for a ride in a Zodiac (an eightperson inflatable motorized boat).
On one particularly memorable day, we stopped in an Edenic fjord shaped like an amphitheater where glaciers calved and bergy bits (ice shorter than 16 feet above sea level) bobbed in the water. It was a place that neither Graser nor Verdesoto, a pair who have several decades of Antarctic experience between them, had been. But because we could get back there, we spent the afternoon kayaking and photographing the Weddell seals — which looked like long, overstuffed cigars — that had hauled out on the ice floes. The calm, protected waters also made it possible to do a polar plunge. (Nearly everyone who dared to jump from the mouth of the boat came up sputtering and cursing.)
The ship’s capabilities also mean that the collection of biologists, ecologists and climate scientists on board can conduct important new work.
Because of Lindblad Expeditions’ partnership with National Geographic, numerous scientists are along for the ride. Our particular sailing included Shaylyn Potter and Brett Garner, whose studies involve marine conservation and testing for microplastics, and Javier Cotin, whose fieldwork involves adding whale and bird sightings to databases from which other scientists can pull. Other sailings this season included John Durban and Holly Fearnbach, a couple whose work focuses on whether the warming climate is threatening the food source of orcas. Each scientist’s work has helped serve as a yardstick to how quickly the continent’s environment is being altered by people around the world. Each night before dinner, the scientists would give presentations on their work, putting what we’d seen that day into context. four days a week, in exchange for an RV hookup until Sept. 1. “We find we work more hours than required, because it’s just so enjoyable,” Keith says.
Donna Carmon, 53, and Kevin Wade, 58 aren’t quite ready for the RV life; they both work full-time and are engaged to be married, but they live in separate households. Still, they’ve been able to sample camper cohabitation for the past two years through a volunteer opportunity with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Every weekend for six months out of the year, they commute
With the knowledge gleaned from one of the talks, I tried to identify which species of penguin was atop a short mountain one morning. I was on my balcony, and from that distance, even with a telephoto lens, the scene looked more like a negative of the night sky: an expanse of white where the stars (metaphorically and of this particular show) were the color of midnight. I’d have to wait until we got ashore to put my learning to the test.
It didn’t take long.
When the Zodiac reached the rocky beach, a squad of gentoo penguins waddled down from their perch and dove into the water.
Penguins have their own highway systems, areas where the footfalls of the flock have beaten down the snow between the nesting site and the water. People aren’t allowed to about 30 miles west of Carmon’s home near Kansas City, Kansas, and live in their camper at a campground near Clinton Lake, at no charge, in exchange for 20 hours of volunteering per week. Carmon works at the visitor center, while Wade handles maintenance duties around the park. In their free time, they boat, fish, hike and make friends at the campground. “There’s farm fields, quiet, cows, the lake, and it’s just beautiful,” says Carmon, who learned about volunteering during a camping visit. “And we see deer every evening. Oh, it’s walk on them, so to see the colony from a closer distance, we had to blaze our own path to the top of the mountain. It was a slow hike up, though not because it’s particularly steep or because the myriad layers forced a tinsoldier gait; with each step came the desire to stop and snap a few more photos. just spectacular.”
Heather Burke, the national partnership and volunteer program manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, says volunteers are critical to the agency’s sites in 43 states. They help with interpretation and education programs, fish and wildlife habitat improvements, invasive species management, trail construction and maintenance, photography and more. “Last year, we had more than 18,000 volunteers serving 1.56 million hours,” Burke says. “And that equates to about 750 full-time employees.”
‘BEST OF BOTH WORLDS’
As a volunteer at the lighthouse keepers’ quarters at Cape Lookout National Seashore in North Carolina, Susan Burke, 74, says the most common question she gets is, “How did you get your job?”
It’s actually a gig through the National Park Service that she found while perusing volunteer.gov four years ago. For two to three weeks a year, she travels to the undeveloped barrier islands and lives in a historic home where lighthouse keepers lived called the keepers’ quarters. By day, she At the colony, I focused my lens on a snoozy gentoo penguin whose feathers shone like an oil slick in the glow of the midmorning sun. It was like nothing else existed but the penguin and me. Until it wasn’t. Into the frame came the penguin’s mate, carrying a pebble. And as he gingerly added the rock to the perimeter of the nest, a wee downy head peeked out from under the mother’s protective pouch and gave a soprano squawk.
The original Resolution didn’t have experiences like this — at least not to this magnitude. Though the ship was considered state of the art in its time, it never made landfall on Antarctica. The famed captain wasn’t able to confirm there was land beyond the ice. Here, atop a mountain nearly a quarter-millennium later, awed by the splendor and immensity of the White Continent, I realized just how grateful I was to have caught the ship’s second act. greets visitors who arrive by ferry and boat and talks about the history of the lighthouse and lightkeepers. When the last passenger ferry leaves, she embraces the quiet. “It’s the best of both worlds,” she says. “When the ferry comes and the visitors come, they’re all excited to be here, and they’re having fun. And then they all leave at 6 o’clock at night. And I have the place to myself.”
The volunteer opportunities available through the National Park Service are as different as the parks themselves, including both run-of-the-mill duties (picking up trash) and intriguing endeavors (babysitting turtle nests on a beach). Shari Orr, the national manager of the agency’s volunteer program, says nearly
300,000 volunteers a year play an essential role. Because of the pandemic, many regular volunteers have been unable to serve. “A lot of parks are actually rebuilding their volunteer programs right now,” Orr says. “There’s a huge need for new volunteers to come in or previous volunteers to reengage.” Visit nps.gov/getinvolved/ volunteer or volunteer.gov to see what’s available.