Volunteers of America
Things will be changing around the good ol’ USA for the next few years. We don’t anticipate any help from the State or Federal levels. In reality, we haven’t seen any help from those sources for quite a few years now.
In discussion with the Iron County Forest Administrator, we are planning ahead to continue grooming snow and maintaining trail, and proceeding with some significant current trail improvements as well as at least two trail re-routes; but that’s next summer.
We’re on our own.
We’ve all interacted with them; the little old ladies handling the hospital stations where relatives wait for their patients, the Scout leaders, the high school assistant coaches, the people at the animal shelters and battered people havens.
They’re not getting paid.
They are not getting up in the morning motivated by making a pay check. They’re going out there to deal with serious, sometimes uncomfortable situations because they think it’s important… and there’s, sadly, nobody else to do it.
It’s the same with the Rangers and many of the other ski clubs in the area. We like to ski. We think it’s important to make it possible for people to get out in the winter, away from the dirty, salted streets wether they’re on skis or snowshoes or their Sorels. There’s just nobody out there to do it for us.
It doesn’t snow only on Wednesdays, settle in on Thursday and wait for us to groom Friday night and then calm down through the weekend so everyone can get out and follow the trails. Ranger volunteers have to be able to look ahead and plan out an operation, and even then, most of time, we’re totally taken by surprise. We can set up the most elegant plan for 5+ volunteers spread out on parts of the most remote trail in the lake states and have it all fall apart within 48 hours.
Start over.
And yet, they’re ready to go again next weekend with it’s set of random variables.
We wouldn’t have our trails without them. We wouldn’t have the special extras, like the races we’ve had, the Hygge Hike coming up.
Volunteers all. They make it happen.
Think it over for yourself. Ask yourself where you could make a difference for the next few years. The Rangers have tons of work; but so do the shelters, the hospital, the County Human Services. Your community needs you more than ever.
Volunteer for America and after you’ve put in the hours you can spare, come out and enjoy what other volunteers have done for you.
We mean like, SKI FREELY, eh? Z
Oh, we almost forgot; there’s new snow, boiler-plate, great body. There’s more in the forecast that actually looks like it might come near enough to cover everything and put us back to work setting track. Don’t miss it.
