Last weekend, I participated in Into the Streets with Rose House. This wasn’t my first time, so honestly I wasn’t surprised that we were working outside. I was, however, surprised by what we ended up doing. Perhaps it wasn’t supposed to happen, but the last time I did ITS, I didn’t have to go to the kick-off event and instead, we focused specifically on the organization we were helping, finished everything we had to do, learned a little, and left two hours earlier. This time around, it was definitely a different experience.

First off, I wasn’t really feeling the kick-off event. It’s an okay concept, but I feel like with the long lines and whole groups checking in, getting t-shirts, and watching student groups perform could have been forgone. It honestly felt like I was wasting the two hours of not being effective at all. I signed up to volunteer, not to wait around Kennedy Hall.

After the kick-off event, we got into taxis to go to the YMCA Outdoor Education Center. Before the event, we had just heard that we were going to the Y, so when the taxi driver said that there were only portapotties available there, we were caught off-guard. But in the end, the weather cooperated nicely, so it ended up being a good time outdoors.

This was definitely a community resource I hadn’t heard of. 100 acres of land that does programming throughout the year for people who want to learn new skills and kids for summer camps. When we got there, we waited for instructions in the main pavilion area, and over the course of about half an hour, about seventy ITS volunteers were ready for marching orders. Since there were so many people, we were split up into different projects. Some of them involved going to different parts of the land, but about a third of the volunteers stayed around the main pavilion.

Since my foot was hurting, I decided that instead of being part of the group that was carrying logs around, I would join the “artsy” project. It turns out that this artsy project was not actually that artistic, but it was interesting. Our group, made up of some Rose scholars and GRF Magdala, were charged with weaving grapevine through an existing structure to make it watertight. This seemed like a pretty impossible goal, as the existing shelter(?) had pretty big holes, most of the vines we had to use were really stiff and long, and it’s sort of unfathomable how it could become watertight. At one point, when we were pretty much out of usable vines, another group was tasked with pulling fresh vines off of trees, and that looked exhausting yet fun.

It was definitely an interesting experience, trying to get the vines to weave through the existing structure. From the outside, it was hard to figure out where and how to thread the vines through. From the inside, it was a struggle to keep focused with debris falling all over your face and clothes. In the end, we didn’t get it anywhere near watertight, but there was clear improvement. I wasn’t too sure what community benefit this had, but I can definitely appreciate that the structure that was there when we started must have taken a good amount of teamwork and time.

Not feeling like I had explored enough of the outdoor education center, I decided to join another group who was cleaning up the archery setup from the summer camps the Y runs. There, we disassembled hay bales and kicked around the loose hay. We then brought the targets and their stands back to the original pavilion. Honestly, I wish I could have seen more of what they had. I know another group was working on their playground and I think another group was setting up a new trail. For the most part, I had spent my time around that starting pavilion.

At the end, all groups were gathered around and we were clearing an area of land that is hopefully going to be used for things like soccer. Along the way, I got poked by one of the mean plants they warned us to watch out for, I learned what a wild strawberry looks like, and had some fun throwing rocks out of the way. Before the final send-off, we regrouped and did a breathing exercise, taking in more of the fresh air the woods had to offer. Overall, the volunteering was an enjoyable ITS experience. I could have dealt without the two hours before that when we didn’t really do anything, but I got to spend time outdoors on a surprisingly nice late-October day, got to know some more Rose scholars, learned some interesting things, and helped out the local Y. Definitely not a bad way to spend a Saturday.