Part 2 (1/2)
Wa.s.saw Island is a 10,053-acre national wildlife refuge with rolling dunes, live oaks, vast salt marshes, and a 6-mile-long beach where the female loggerheads sneak in each summer to lay nests of 120 eggs the size of Ping-Pong b.a.l.l.s. Getting there requires a 45-minute boat ride from Landings Harbor Marina on Skidaway Island.
CANNONb.a.l.l.s AND TURTLE EGGS.
During the Civil War, Wa.s.saw was occupied at different times by both Confederate and Union soldiers. Blowing sands once revealed the complete skeleton of a soldier, along with a .56-caliber bullet and a b.u.t.ton from the uniform of the First Georgia Regiment. Cannonb.a.l.l.s have been found along the full length of the island's northern end.
Well before the war, though, in the early 1800s, the island was owned by Anthony Odingsell, a black planter who listed 11 slaves among his possessions. In 1866, the island was purchased by George Parsons, a wealthy entrepreneur, who built the existing housing compound as a hideaway for his family and friends. In October 1969, after 103 years of Parsons family owners.h.i.+p, the island was sold to the Nature Conservancy for one million dollars. The Conservancy, in turn, deeded the land to the U.S. Department of the Interior to be managed as a wildlife refuge. For this transaction, though, the cost was the princely sum of one dollar.
In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers supervised the construction of Fort Morgan on Wa.s.saw Island's north end. Though portions of the fort, which was built by civilians, survive today, it is threatened due to erosion.
Volunteers stay in a rustic cabin (no air-conditioning or indoor showers). Because turtles lay their eggs at night-it's safer that way-turtle patrol usually begins around nightfall and lasts until roughly 5 a.m. Daytime is when you'll sleep and have free time to explore, hike the island's many dirt roads, swim in the pool, and go bird-watching. Not only does Wa.s.saw support rookeries for egrets and herons, but a variety of wading birds also show up each summer.
Volunteers pay $750 per week. This includes transportation to and from Skidaway Island, a cabin bunk, and all meals.
HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.
Caretta Research Project, P.O. Box 9841, Savannah, GA 31412, 912-447-8655, edian Robin Williams was chosen to play Patch Adams in the eponymous 1998 movie about his life should be your first clue that Dr. Adams is not your average M.D. and that the Gesundheit! Inst.i.tute that he started in rural West Virginia is not your run-of-the-mill hospital. Situated amid beautiful mountains, hardwood forests, and at least three waterfalls, Gesundheit! is a holistic hospital and health-care community based on the radical notion that medicine should actually be fun and free.
Whether you saw the movie or not, it's probably obvious by now that a volunteer vacation to Patch's 317-acre inst.i.tute promises to be unorthodox and extraordinary. Although the ”silly hospital” that Patch envisioned is still on the drawing board, there's an active community of artists, dreamers, healers, and clowns interested in changing the medical paradigm. They're living at the inst.i.tute, preparing the land, and building the community that will sustain the hospital once it is built. Volunteers of all stripes are welcome.
A significant component of the Gesundheit! experience is education. Programs are based on Patch's vision for world peace, social justice, and the recognition that the health of the individual cannot be separated from the health of the community. The idea is that volunteers should learn about Gesundheit!'s utopian ideas so they can return to their homes and spread the vision.
WACKY HOSPITAL.
The 40-room Gesundheit! Hospital will be completely free, with no malpractice insurance and no third-party insurance. If you think that's wacky, you ought to get a load of the architectural blueprints. A giant ear sticks off one end of the building and giant feet mark the entrance. Below the main hospital floor, there's a waterway that allows people to travel from one end to the other via paddleboat. Beautiful murals cover the walls, toys line the floors, and secret doorways and slides add mystique and amus.e.m.e.nt.
NUT-WORKING.
For 35 years, Patch Adams has been involved in what he calls ”clown healing work.” He and a posse of clowns have visited hospitals on every continent, and often go to places where few dare to venture, for what he calls ”humanitarian clowning.” Since 1984, he has taken clowns to Russia each year for two weeks of clowning in hospitals, orphanages, prisons, and nursing homes. The clowns now go on six to eight overseas missions per year. For instance: In 2006, Patch and 45 clowns and 8 builders constructed a seven-room clinic in Perquin, El Salvador.
Patch and 22 clowns from six continents took 10 tons of aid into war-torn Afghanistan.
Patch took clowns into both Bosnia and the Kosovo refugee camps.
His merry band has brought joy to Romanian AIDS orphanages.
Patch took a team of 17 clowns to Cuba.
Patch and his clowning pals have visited African refugee camps.
In 2006, Patch took clowns to tsunami relief camps in Sri Lanka.
While living at the Gesundheit! Inst.i.tute, volunteers might prepare fresh whole foods for the three dozen or so attendees of the inst.i.tute's annual School for Designing a Society or build a deck on the back of the barn or collect buckets of sugar maple sap. For their community service projects, they might don red noses for clowning at the Pocahontas Care Center in Marlinton or pick up trash along U.S. 219 between Locust Creek Road and Hillsboro.
Every year, the inst.i.tute hosts work camps, visitor weekends (where volunteers work for a day or two) as well as an increasing number of educational offerings. For example, medical students come each year to learn about medicinal herbs, health-care clowning, and other topics pertinent to Patch's vision of integrating medicine with fun, art, and friends.h.i.+p.
Patch's big, crazy dream began in 1971 when he and a couple of other doctors opened a free hospital located in Arlington, Virginia. It was a six-bedroom house where Patch and 20 adults (including two other docs) lived and practiced medicine. Their ”zany hospital” was open 24/7, for all manner of medical problems. They saw 500 to 1,000 people each month, including many who took up residence. Patch called the pilot project ”ecstatic, fascinating, and stimulating.” After nine years of no donations and being refused for some 1,400 foundation grants, the project was finally disbanded. Dr. Adams, of course, persevered, making, as he describes it, a deal with ”the devil”-to cooperate with the movie and get some publicity for his project.
Volunteers are needed at the Gesundheit! Inst.i.tute from April through October with a minimum commitment of one month. In exchange for 35 hours of work per week, Gesundheit! provides room and board. Some of the positions include gardeners, cooks, builders, and housekeepers. If you can't spare a month, consider the Visitor Weekend Program or a short-term work camp, which could involve such service work as organic gardening, s.h.i.+take mushroom gathering, composting toilet building, or even answering phones. All three options are-you guessed it-completely free.
HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.
Gesundheit! Inst.i.tute, P.O. Box 268, Hillsboro, WV 24946, 304-653-4338, e because, like Roosevelt said, it has the power to change your life. In the winter, the little community has barely a hundred people, mostly folks who ranch or manage the Theodore Roosevelt National Park or the government business of being the Billings County seat. But in the summer, when folks are out of school or off work, they flock from all over the country to Medora in droves. Something like 300,000 show up during any given summer.
Needless to say, that's far too big a crowd for the permanent residents to be able to feed and house and sell souvenirs to all of them. So, in 1998, the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes the area, came up with the brilliant scheme of bringing in volunteers who could serve the locally famous pitchfork fondue (steaks speared on nickel-plated pitchforks and cooked over a campfire in a cauldron of boiling oil); usher at the Burning Hills Amphitheater, a 2,900-seat theater that since 1958 has been presenting the high-energy Medora Musical; staff the Harold Schafer Heritage Center; clear tables at the Chuckwagon Buffet; and greet tourists at the information center. Preseason volunteers get the town ready for its summer close-up.
The volunteer season runs from mid-May to mid-September and is divided into three segments. If you come in mid-May, you'll be in charge of painting, planting flowers, and sprucing up the little town with its wooden sidewalks, split-rail fences, barn-board buildings, and wooden benches. This perfectly coiffed town could easily double as Disneyland's Frontierland. Those volunteer stints run for five days. If you time your visit right, you'll be able to catch the Cowboy Poetry Gathering on Memorial Day weekend.
SPEAKING OF NORTH DAKOTA AND VOLUNTEERING.
If you didn't get enough of Lewis and Clark during their recent bicentennial celebration, you're in luck. There's another volunteer opportunity in North Dakota at Fort Mandan, the historic North Dakota wintering ground for the intrepid explorers in 180405. It was at the Mandan-Hidatsa Indian village (now called Fort Mandan) that Lewis and Clerk met Sacagawea, the Native American woman who made their historic journey possible. During their five months in North Dakota, longer than they stayed anywhere else, Lewis and Clark interviewed many Mandan Indians and drew maps from the tales they were told.
From May through October, Fort Mandan and the North Dakota Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Washburn, North Dakota, invite volunteers with RVs to partic.i.p.ate in what they call the Extended-Stay Volunteer Program. Volunteers come for eight-day or one-month stints during which they water trees, wash picnic tables, escort tour groups through the fort and interpretive center, and more. In return for their services, usually about 20 hours a week, volunteers get a free RV site with full hookups and discounts in the gift shop and at local attractions. Lewis & Clark Fort Mandan Foundation, P.O. Box 607, Washburn, ND 58577, 877-462-8535 or 701-462-8535, .