It did not look good.
A stiff westerly wind was raking the blue-black waters of Lake Superior into a frenzy. Skyrockets of spray careened off the bow of the National Park Service boat Plover. Landing at the Michigan Island Lighthouse would be dicey, but Karen Halbersleban is not one to back down from a challenge. President of Northland College, she had chosen a sabbatical in favor of a raise during her last contract negotiations, precisely so that she could make this dream come true. A few waves were not going to stop her now. "The captain looked at me and could see the fierce light in my eye," she says. He knew they had to try.
Following a skillful dance of boatmanship in the wind and waves, the vessel nosed up to the dock long enough for one passenger to disembark. Those who remained onboard tossed the gear onto the dock, shouted quick goodbyes, and pushed away in a matter of moments. Just that quickly Karen Halbersleban was alone on an island, about to fulfill a dream that began three years earlier when she first learned of the unique volunteer program at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin. For the next month, she would no longer be known as "President Halbersleban" but as "keeper of the light."
As Halbersleban climbed the steps up the tower of the Michigan Island Light that day, she joined not only a long line of keepers at the 150-year-old lighthouse but an even longer line of volunteers who give freely of their time and talents each year in our national parks. The VIP (Volunteers-In-Parks) program is one of the largest and most successful volunteer programs in the nation. Begun in 1970, it has become a juggernaut of goodwill and helping hands. Last year alone, the VIP program coordinated the efforts of 137,000 volunteers who logged 5.2 million hours of service in 365 areas managed by the National Park Service.
Those hours are spent in tasks as varied as the parks themselves. Volunteers run the annual butterfly count in Congaree National Park in South Carolina and inventory Kemp's Ridley sea turtle hatchlings at Padre Island National Seashore in Texas. Last year volunteers helped Alaska’s Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve enter its first-ever float in the local Fourth of July Parade. And they lit more than 8,000 luminaries at what is now Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Site, one for each Mexican and American soldier who fought in a string of 1864 battles along the Rio Grande. In some national parks, you see the work of volunteers by looking up: Volunteers helped release 13 California condors to the skies over Pinnacles National Monument this year, and every year they turn more than 27,000 pairs of eyes to the heavens above Utah’s Bryce Canyon during stargazing programs. In other parks, their efforts are most evident by looking down: Volunteers at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky helped facilitate the largest "mock cave rescue" in park history last year, and volunteers in Nevada aided in the reintroduction of the Bonneville cutthroat trout to its native streams in Great Basin National Park.
In a time when the Park Service is operating with an $800 million annual budget shortfall, VIPs in their green uniforms and "Volunteer" patches have become nearly as visible as the rangers themselves. Last year, volunteers in Badlands National Park in South Dakota led 40 percent of the interpretive programs and made 60 percent of the visitor contacts.
"Volunteers have become absolutely vital to our park," says Babette Collavo, who oversees the Great Smoky Mountains' volunteer program, the third largest in the nation. "Last year alone, our program provided services equivalent to the hiring of 56 permanent staff. They are filling gaps that otherwise simply wouldn’t get filled."
They are retirees and ranchers, scientists and schoolteachers. They are college presidents and college students. Each summer, the Student Conservation Association, now in its 50th year, deploys nearly 3,000 volunteers to parks, forests, and refuges all over the country. These crews of six to eight high school and college students cut trails, build bridges, and participate in interpretive programs, donating 1.6 million hours--much of them in national parks.
Many VIPs, like Karen Halbersleban, are area residents who volunteer to become more familiar with nearby parks. For others, the journey is considerably longer. Last year the International VIP program placed 117 volunteers from 34 countries in 43 U.S. national parks--people like Patricio Bustos, a veterinary science student from Chile who spent five months in Rocky Mountain National Park tracking mountain lions and helping with bear monitoring projects.
Bob Krumenaker, the superintendent of Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, who himself began his career as a park volunteer, understands the motivation many volunteers feel. "Parks represent motherhood and apple pie for many people," he says, "the 'best idea America ever had,' as Wallace Stegner said. And, as corny as this may sound, public service still resonates with people in this country. Volunteering in a beautiful, historic place gives them a chance to give something back and add depth to their relationship with the parks."
For a growing number of volunteers, adding that depth has meant combining volunteering and vacation. "Stomping through the thick woods with a backpack full of 40 pounds of moose bones may seem like a strange vacation to some," says Dr. Rolf Peterson, "but there are people who come back every single year." Over the past 19 years, nearly 500 Earthwatch volunteers have participated in Peterson's classic wolf-moose study on Isle Royale National Park, ponying up $950 and paying their own travel expenses for the privilege of scouring the island and collecting moose bones for analysis. 'It is the hardest work many of them have ever done," Peterson says, but there are paybacks. "This spring we hiked 42 miles and never set foot on a trail. These volunteers get a view of Isle Royale that most hikers could only dream of." And sometimes they are rewarded with close-up views of wolves, too. "Two years ago, an Earthwatch volunteer got a full-frame photograph of a wolf peeking into the flap of his tent," says Peterson.
The latest VIP annual report lists the value of services rendered by national park volunteers in the most recent fiscal year at $91,260,000. But for the volunteers themselves, it goes far beyond monetary value. Dick Marin volunteers with the Elk Bugle Corps in Rocky Mountain National Park during the September rutting season, when huge bull elk arrive en masse, followed by countless tourists; volunteers educate the public, keep them at a safe distance, and enjoy the elk themselves. "To be alone in a remote part of the park, surrounded by elk and see the moon rise over the Rocky Mountains on a warm fall night--I wish everyone, once in their lifetime, could be where I was that night." How do you put a decimal point on a face-to-face encounter with a wolf or tally up the value of a moonrise? How do you put dollar signs on the view from the top of the 112-foot tower at the Michigan Island Light?
"That became my favorite spot," says Halbersleban, the college president-turned-keeper. "It was the place I felt the most connection with the keepers of the past." Today in Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, the lights are all automated. The Michigan Island light snaps on at dusk and off at dawn with the aid of solar-powered timing devices. There is no coal to haul for the steam-powered foghorns that once bellowed from some of the Apostle’s seven lights, no wicks to trim (a task that earned keepers the nickname "wickies"). Still, the days of a volunteer keeper fall into a natural rhythm like the keepers of the past, a cadence set by chores and visitors, the needs of the light, and the realities of the living conditions.
"As my life slowed into nature's rhythm," Halberslaban says, "I rediscovered the joys of being unplugged. With no electric lights, I found myself going to bed when it got dark and getting up with the sun." There was, however, grass to mow, trails to keep clear, and an inquisitive black bear to shoo away from interpretive signs. But the real work began when the tour boats approached.
"Lighthouses are the symbols of these islands for most visitors," says Superintendent Krumenaker. "Without access to a lighthouse, their experience here would be much different, and, frankly, without the help of volunteers who now occupy all but one of the lighthouses where we have staffing, it would simply not be possible to provide the opportunities that we do."
For a teacher with a Ph.D. in history, weaving the stories of the lighthouses and their keepers came easily. Halberslaben gave 99 tours to a total of 495 visitors during her stint. One, in particular, she remembers quite vividly.
"There was a very elderly woman on the tour boat one day who was determined to get up the tower," she recalls. "It must have taken her 20 minutes just to climb the 139 steps to the lighthouse station. Then she was faced with another 110 steps to the top of the tower. I remember asking her, 'Are you sure you’re up to this?' But she wouldn’t stop." Despite having to literally crawl on her hands and knees at times, the woman made it to the top, with the keeper’s help. "When I asked her why she wanted to do this so badly, she told me that she had planned to do it with her husband before his recent death, and that she was doing it for both of them," Halbersleban says. "That was a moment I really felt like [my presence] made a difference."
When the tour boats left at the end of each day, Halbersleban took a water bottle, her radio, and a canvas chair to her favorite spot atop the tower. All alone, living out a dream on an island, she watched the sun set over Lake Superior until it was dark enough to see the lighthouse beam. "That beam became a kind of symbol for me," she says, "a light shining out into the darkness. It's what I think education is all about." And it's not a bad symbol for her work and the work of thousands of others like her in our national parks, a light shining bright and gleaming out into the world.
