Meet Brick, Park Volunteer
I’m told I am the longest serving ’vole’ and so merit this mention in dispatches, which is nice but you are only ever one of a team when volunteering at Bestwood Country Park. Seniority rests solely with the Rangers. Within four full seasons of a plague-free year, a rookie knows as much as I do about the tools we employ and the tasks we perform each season. I still stumble over species identification, still get confused about which clearing is where, and still there are areas of this wonderful park I’m only vaguely familiar with.
Remarkably, in a decade and a half, I have been a member of only two core teams. At the peripheries, volunteers we knew would never cut it have come and gone, but it’s those from the core, sadly forced to leave for family or health reasons, that we miss and whose replacements ring the changes. Each brought their own special quality to the unit, be it dry humour, epic yarns, pub quizzes or younger muscles, as have the newbies who have melded in.
Most of us are retired. Having spent our working lives in soulless environments pursuing careers, trades and callings that have all but driven us crazy, we enter the service looking to do something real. At the end of a shift we see progress and sense achievement, even if weaving another windrow, clearing a field of ragwort or mending a fence barely registers in the overriding management plan. If the authorities show no sign of appreciating our efforts, we know our Rangers do. A couple started out as volunteers. As long as our weekly five hours are efficacious to the future well-being of the estate, it matters not that the public rarely notices, though once in a blue moon we do get a thank you.
We all come to love the park and relish the graft, emotional bonds that Covid lockouts put a strain on. Without a doubt, volunteering at Bestwood is the ultimate in what the Japanese call ’forest bathing’, and it's possibly the only thing keeping us sane.
Remarkably, in a decade and a half, I have been a member of only two core teams. At the peripheries, volunteers we knew would never cut it have come and gone, but it’s those from the core, sadly forced to leave for family or health reasons, that we miss and whose replacements ring the changes. Each brought their own special quality to the unit, be it dry humour, epic yarns, pub quizzes or younger muscles, as have the newbies who have melded in.
Most of us are retired. Having spent our working lives in soulless environments pursuing careers, trades and callings that have all but driven us crazy, we enter the service looking to do something real. At the end of a shift we see progress and sense achievement, even if weaving another windrow, clearing a field of ragwort or mending a fence barely registers in the overriding management plan. If the authorities show no sign of appreciating our efforts, we know our Rangers do. A couple started out as volunteers. As long as our weekly five hours are efficacious to the future well-being of the estate, it matters not that the public rarely notices, though once in a blue moon we do get a thank you.
We all come to love the park and relish the graft, emotional bonds that Covid lockouts put a strain on. Without a doubt, volunteering at Bestwood is the ultimate in what the Japanese call ’forest bathing’, and it's possibly the only thing keeping us sane.
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BRICK is a political cartoonist, comics creator and adventure travel writer who read too much Jack London as a kid and wanted to grow up to be a lumber jack.
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