Zen and the Art of Campground Maintenance

When we interviewed for our job here at Warm River, we were told that this campground was the showplace of the Ashton/Island Park Ranger District’s campgrounds.  Our new management has exacting standards on how our campground should appear and how we need to maintain it.

 

ATVs are not allowed in this campground.  Period.  So this year we are driving around in a green and beige golf cart which we've dubbed “The Maserati.”  This year we do our daily work in two “shifts.” We clean the restrooms first, and then we do our site preparation.

We have 10 vault toilets in the campground – twice as many as last year.  The cleaning procedure hasn't changed.  I’ll spare you the details.  We expect the cleaning frequency to increase on the weekends when the campground is full.

All our sites are very well manicured.  Our maintenance couple mows the lawn and trims the edges – including around the large rocks that frame the RV sites.  It’s our job to ensure that the picnic tables, grills and fire pits are kept clean. 

We have 22 of our own personal, life-size Zen gardens, aka tent pads. 

We regularly rake the tent pads and sweep the borders.  No weeds are allowed in the tent pads.  The weeds, unfortunately, have not been given this information.  That or they've chosen to ignore it.  They continue to ignore the “no weed” rule at the house as well.  It’s a conspiracy!  That said, I have become quite proficient with a hoe.

We get a regular afternoon wind in our little “bowl.”  Trees plus wind equals leaves, branches, and those obnoxious little seed pods in the campsites.  This is not allowed.  We have a gas-powered leaf-blower to help us keep the campsites free of debris – even if it’s natural.

After spending last summer in the wilderness, it almost feels like we’re working in a city park rather than a campground.

Welcome to Ashton, Idaho

The Warm River Campground sits nine miles from Ashton, Idaho, population 1,211.  At least, that’s what the sign says.  This small town, situated between two scenic byways (the Mesa Falls Scenic Byway and the Teton Scenic Byway), caters to tourists, locals, and of course, the campers that visit our site and the other campgrounds in the Island Park area. 

The local grocery store, Dave’s Jubilee, offers grocery and sundry items, has a deli and a really great produce department.  Dave’s Jubilee is affiliated with Associated Foods, so we’re finding all the products we’re accustomed to buying.  It also has a decent selection of beer and wine.  We introduced ourselves on an early morning visit and they were happy to open their safe to make change for our petty cash fund. This was nice since the nearest Wells Fargo bank is in Rexburg, 28 miles away.

We've found three restaurants so far.  El Rincon, the Mexican restaurant, was quite authentic.  Of course, you know a Mexican restaurant is authentic when everyone is speaking Spanish but you.  511 Main has a classic soda fountain feel and features pizza, sandwiches and soups.  We haven’t tried their pizza yet but the soups and sandwiches are quite good.

Our company orientation was held at the Trails End Restaurant.  The interior is designed to resemble a hunting lodge, complete with the heads of animals on the far wall.  They have a white buffalo head.  I understand that Native Americans considered the white buffalo sacred, so I really hope it is a fake.  But back to the food – we’ll have to reserve judgment as it is pretty tough to mess up turkey and cheese on white bread with lettuce and tomato, potato chips, and Chips Ahoy cookies.

For those of you who don’t camp, Ashton has two motels, a combined motel/RV park, and log cabin rentals. 

We found a small liquor store on inside of Lenz Electronics on Main Street.  The store owner was sitting on a lawn chair in front of the store, and as we approached he followed us in and directed us past the clothing and electronics to the liquor section.  The store reminds me of the small general stores we saw in movies and on TV. 

Ashton has two hardware stores, one of which sells fishing licenses.  We’re still talking ourselves into buying the high-priced out-of-state fishing licenses, so we haven’t been there yet. 

The library at Ashton charged us a mere $10 for a library card.  We couldn't get our money out fast enough.  It’s a small library, but it has everything we’re looking for – books, movies, and internet service, just in case our DSL decides to take a long vacation.

There are five churches here in Ashton.  We had a very pleasant encounter with the Ashton Christian Fellowship when the pastor visited with us to arrange for baptisms in the Warm River.  The baptisms happened last Sunday at site 13; the small group who had gathered to welcome three new believers also welcomed us to participate in the service.  It was inspiring. 

A bit of interesting trivia:  Ashton hosts the American Dog Derby, which is the oldest dog sled race in the lower 48 states.  This historic dog sled race runs from Ashton to Cascade Corner of Yellowstone Park.  If you’re interested in watching the 97^th running, it will be held February 13 – 15, 2014.

I think we’re going to enjoy being part of the extended community of Ashton. 

Lap of Luxury

Our last camp hosting assignment was, well, primitive.  We were in a wilderness area accessed via a 12 mile dirt road just outside of Lonetree, Wyoming.  We had no electricity.  We had no cell service.  We had no internet service.  Our site was also a dirt “pull through”, complete with a large rock that trapped the truck as we tried to pull into it. Our contact with civilization came through our campers and through our weekly trips down the mountain.

Don’t get me wrong.  We loved it at Hoop Lake.  But in comparison, the assignment here at Warm River is truly living in the lap of luxury.  We are parked on a flat, gravel surface with a concrete patio where our picnic table sits.  Our front lawn is just down a few steps.  Up a few steps and we’re at the main signpost where we can greet our incoming campers.

We have full hookups – water, sewer and electricity.  We have a land line and DSL service.  The DSL seems to be intermittent, but it has worked at least part of every day since we’ve had it hooked up.  Our cell phones get very limited service here, but we are able to receive and send text messages and emails.

I have hot water on demand!  We chose not to run the water heater constantly last year to conserve propane, so we would have to turn it on and then wait ½ hour to shower.  I heated water on the stove to do dishes.  But with electricity and a new water heater, I turn the faucet and just like magic, hot water comes out.  On a personal note, Paul’s brother Jon helped him wire the water heater five days before he died unexpectedly.  We miss you, Jon.

Electricity allows us a few more luxuries.  I can use my percolator – no more “camp coffee” cooked on the stovetop.  Well, I kind of miss that a little.  We have a television and can play movies by connecting the laptop.  I don’t have to turn on a generator to use the vacuum.

The final luxury is our proximity to a real town – with a grocery store, a gas station, restaurants, and get this – a Redbox!  More about Ashton,  Idaho, in my next post.  

Welcome to Warm River

Greetings from the Warm River Campground!  Our new home-away-from-home sits about nine miles east of Ashton, Idaho, in the beautiful Caribou/Targhee National Forest.  We’re about 30 miles from Mack’s Inn in Island Park, and about 45 miles from the West entrance to Yellowstone Park.

The campground sits in an ancient caldera, about 1200 feet lower in elevation than any of our “sister” campgrounds.  This allows us to open earliest and close latest.  We arrived on May 3. The official opening day was May 5.

The campground, named for the Warm River that runs through it, features 15 RV sites and 13 tent sites. 

Every site is walking distance to the river, although some of the sites have longer walks than others. The roads are all paved, the RVs pads are paved, and the tent sites have sand.  The picnic tables are mostly new.  Two of our sites have electricity (sites 12 and 13).

Our site is the first site you’ll see as you come into the campground.  We have space for tents on the lawn in front of our trailer.  We’re told this is a very busy campground that will always fill up, so if you want your own space, you may want to make a reservation at www.recreation.gov or at 877-444-6777.

Yes, we have lawns!  The grounds are maintained by our new friends Jim and Debra, who will be our partners in camp hosting this year.  They live across the road from us in a trailer owned by a large, long-haired Siamese cat named John Wayne.  So far John and Ty have not met.  My money would be on the cat.

We’re gearing up for the busy season that should begin on Memorial Day weekend, but so far it’s been pretty quiet.  Lots of fishermen walk into the campground.  Now that we’re here we have to charge them to park.  They hate that.  They tell us that fishing is good.  We’ll have to find out how to get an Idaho fishing license – very soon.  

Emotional Intelligence In Real Life

The lawnmower wasn't working.  It would start, I would push it two feet, and it would die.  My husband saw this and waved me over.  I took the grass catcher off, emptied it into a garbage bag, and brought mower, catcher and bag to the spot where he was standing.

He glowered at me.  “Are you going to leave that trash bag right here in my way?’  I said nothing.  I moved the bag.

He started the mower.  He fiddled with a couple of gears or knobs or buttons or something, and then he pointed at the grass catcher.  Since the mower was on I could only assume he wanted me to bring it to him; it was far too loud for conversation.   I walked over, picked up the grass catcher, and attempted to put it on the lawnmower.  He took the grass catcher from my hands and flung it across the lawn, much to the amusement of the man waiting at the bus stop in front of the rental unit where we were working.

He turned the mower off and shouted at me.  “Don’t you know that’s the worst place you can put the catcher when the mower is on?” 

“Thank you,” I said calmly.  “Now I know.”  He turned back to the mower and restarted it.  It continued to run.  I took the mower and finished mowing the lawn without incident.

What?  This story didn't go where you thought it would go, did it?  No yelling in return?  No crying?  No stomping off in a huff and refusing to continue to help until he apologized?  How boring.

There is actually an entire discipline devoted to the ability to give such a boring response.  It’s called Emotional Intelligence.  Wikipedia defines emotional intelligence as “the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups.”  I was introduced to the concept of Emotional Intelligence at work.  The book we studied, The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves, focused on developing emotional intelligence skills in the workplace.

Now that I am retired, it seems I have even more opportunities to practice and enhance my emotional intelligence skills.  It seems it was much easier keeping my own emotions in check, and responding appropriately to the emotions of others, when the “others” in question did not live in the same house as me.  Thinking about this, I've observed that

• -          Many of us find it difficult to take direction from a spouse
• -          Many of us assume that because something comes easily to us it will come easily to others.  Guilty as charged.  So is my spouse.

Compounding the above is the well-known fact that I have very poor hand-eye coordination and anything mechanical comes to me only with great difficulty.  My husband is the exact opposite, and gets soooooo frustrated at my inability to “just figure it out.”  So we have these types of interactions on a fairly regular basis as I learn more and more about the day to day maintenance of rental properties. The emotional intelligence skills I've learned help me keep my emotions from getting in the way of my learning.

The emotional intelligence skills, per Bradberry and Greaves are:

1.  Self-Awareness:  The ability to accurately perceive your own emotions in the moment and to understand your own tendencies in different situations.

2.  Self-Management:  The ability to act – or not to act – on your own emotions.

3. Social Awareness:  The ability to accurately pick up on emotions of other people and to understand what is really going on with them.

4.  Relationship Management:  The ability to use your awareness of your own emotions and those of others to manage interactions successfully.

The authors also note that, unlike IQ or personality, emotional intelligence can be learned and can be increased.  This is a good thing, as I hope to have many more years to practice.

Immortality Shattered

I recently attended a memorial service for a 28-year old man.  His mother is my friend, but I had never met him.  She was devastated.  This was not supposed to happen.  Parents are not supposed to outlive their children.

The hall was filled with family members and friends of the family, but it was also filled with this young man’s friends.  For some of these young people, this was the first time someone of their own age had died.  For some of these young people, their inner concept that they would live forever was shattered.  One of their own had died.  They, too, would die. 

I remember the day when immortality shattered for me.  I was 23.  I had fallen asleep to the radio and was jarred awake when I thought I had heard my friend’s name in a report of a fatal accident.  I left the radio on and dozed fitfully, listening for another report.  It finally came.  My friend LuAnn had been killed in a freak accident on her way home from work that day.

At 7:00 AM the call came.  Her mother was on the other end of the phone.  “I heard,” I told her.  “Is there anything I can do?”  I’m not sure where I came up with that.  Looking back, of course, there was absolutely nothing I could do.  There was absolutely nothing anyone could do. 

The group of her friends – which had only recently become my friends – gathered.  We took turns crying and consoling one another.  We shared our happiest memories of LuAnn.  We grieved with her parents.  And I knew at that time that none of our lives would ever be the same – in more ways than one.

I have come to know that the moment when the loss of a loved one forces us to fully realize that we are mortal creatures, that there is an end of the life we have here on earth, comes to everyone.  I know the story of that moment in my father’s life.  I know the story of that moment in my son’s life. 

The memory of my friend lives on.  LuAnn’s family established a memorial scholarship in her name.  Many students have now had the opportunity to pursue what would have been LuAnn’s dream.  When I picture these students, smiling in their caps and gowns, very much like the photo I have of LuAnn and me at graduation, it makes me smile. 

“Love and Possession, death and life are one.  There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.” --  Hilaire Belloc

Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA)

Many retirees – and non-retirees – look for a meaningful way to give of their spare time in service to others.  My husband, who retired eight years before I did, found the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program a few years ago.  VITA is an IRS-sponsored program, funded (at least in Utah) through the Community Action Program.  Its purpose is to provide income tax preparation, free of charge, to low income individuals and couples.  I joined “Team VITA” this past tax season.

“Now let me get this straight,” you may ask. “You do other peoples taxes for free?  And you like it?”

The answers are yes, and surprisingly, yes. 

Our clients are low income families, many headed by single mothers.  Our clients include the disabled.  And our clients include fellow retirees. 

It is humbling to see how these families get by on what appears to me to be so little income.  It is rewarding to see the gratitude on the face of a single mother when I tell her that her refund, including the Earned Income Credit and the Child Tax Credit, is far more than the amount withheld from her paychecks.  And it is encouraging to see retirees with pensions – since I’ll never see pension income. 

To volunteer, you need to pass two tests on the tax code and learn the TaxWise software used at VITA sites.  The program offered classes and/or self-study.  Of course, as most of you have already experienced, taking a class or two doesn't make you an expert in anything.  This is especially true of the US Tax Code, which is anything but simple.  I learned far more actually doing the tax preparation – mistakes and all – than I did in the classes. 

Yes, I made mistakes.  Lots of them.  Some, if uncorrected, could have cost the taxpayers hundreds of dollars in unclaimed refunds.  As one of the new kids at our site, I was grateful for the experienced volunteers’ quality review of my work – and for their subsequent explanation to me of what I had done wrong.  At VITA sites, every return is quality reviewed by another preparer – to catch little mistakes like a transposed employer ID or direct deposit account numbers, and to catch bigger mistakes like checking the wrong radio button on the EIC worksheet and costing the taxpayer their Earned Income Credit.

So to those taxpayers on whose returns I made errors, I thank you.  I will be a better preparer for it.

Was VITA worth my time?  Absolutely.  I’ll do it again next tax season.  If you’re interested in volunteering, search the web for VITA in your city or state, as volunteers are coordinated at the local level rather than at the federal level.