Still Trying To Figure It Out

We’re volunteering at National Key Deer Refuge on Big Pine Key, Florida.  We’re starting our third week.  Like many new places, sometimes it takes a while to get your feet under you. 

Usually we know what our volunteer assignment will be long before we ever get there.  This assignment has been a little different.  Other than knowing we might work some in the Visitor Center, we really didn’t have any idea what other tasks we would have.    

Our preference would be:  Tell us what you want us to do.  Tell us where we can find the tools to do our job.  Then let us do our job.   

Well, this place is a little different.  So far we only have a few set tasks.  One is our Wild Wednesday Walk.  We’ve only had one so far.  The fact that it wasn’t very well advertised was evident in the small turnout.   

Wild Wednesday Hike

These walks will be every Wednesday morning, except the third Wednesday morning, when we will help lead a kayak trip, and any other Wednesday where something else comes up.  Hummmmm

Every third Sunday we are assigned to work in the Visitor Center.  There will also be other times when we will be asked to help out in the VC.

Once a month we will be helping out on the Full Moon Kayak trip:

We've already had the January Full Moon Kayak trip.

Once a month or so, we will be helping out on a Historic Bike Ride through Big Pine and No Name Keys:

Our first 13 mile Historic Bike Ride

A couple of times a week we are working in the butterfly garden (watering, pulling weeds, picking up trash).  We have to fill up a 100 gallon water tank and haul the water out to the garden:

On most Fridays the refuge manager leads a guided walk.  We have gone on these to help out but we’re not sure if this will be something we will help out with every week.

So, our work days are sort of all over the week.  We are doing a lot of “helping out”, which is different for us. 

There are some fun sounding assignments coming up that we will be helping with and are looking forward to.

This assignment is different than others we have had (we might say that for every assignment!).  Things seem a little disorganized which takes us out of our comfort zone.  I don’t know if we will ever settle in with a routine.  Every week might bring something new and/or changes to our already loose schedule.

All in all this isn’t a bad place to spend the winter.  The cute little Key Deer walk around all over the place and the weather is pretty near perfect.

Teri