The 100 Best Volunteer Vacations to Enrich Your Life Part 3

Pa.s.sPORT IN TIME.

excavate a piece of american history.

U.S. NATIONAL FORESTS.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

-Nelson Henderson, Manitoba pioneer farmer and family man 10 Perhaps the first volunteer for the U.S. Forest Service was Smokey Bear who has been around since 1944 reminding us in one campaign or another that only we can prevent...well, you know the rest of the line.

Forty-four years after Smokey became a well-known national figure, the U.S. Forest Service started a volunteer program that even humans can partic.i.p.ate in. Called Pa.s.sport in Time (PIT), this nationwide program uses volunteers to help professional archaeologists and historians survey, excavate and restore historic and archaeological sites within national forest land. And unlike other programs in the same vein (Earthwatch, for example), partic.i.p.ation in PIT programs is completely free.

PIT projects, listed on the website, vary from year to year. Maybe you'll restore an old gold miner's cabin in the mountains of Colorado or record gravestone data from historical cemeteries in Vermont. Maybe you'll gather oral histories, restore art, or catalog artifacts. Whatever your job (and you can apply for any project that interests you), you'll be working to rescue an important page in America's history books.

Over the years, Pitheads, as longtime volunteers call themselves, have done everything from excavate ancient tools in Mississippi to survey an old military road in Oregon to stabilize cliff dwellings in New Mexico. As of 2007, the Bureau of Land Management began working with Pa.s.sport in Time, so now there are even more protected lands where Pitheads can contribute.

But watch out. It can become an obsession. Some PIT volunteers have contributed more than 500 hours. There's an honor roll that keeps track.

Projects range from two days to several weeks, but the average project lasts five days. Accommodations range from backcountry camping to campgrounds with RV hookups to Forest Service cabins or watch towers. Either way, you'll be well looked after by the Forest Service archaeologists and historians who'll be your hosts. After applying, you'll receive an actual Pa.s.sport in Time pa.s.sport on which to log hours.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Pa.s.sport in Time Clearinghouse, P.O. Box 15728, Rio Rancho, NM 87174, 800-281-9176 or 505-896-0934, www.pa.s.sportintime.com.

SMOKEY DOESN'T HAVE A MIDDLE NAME Smokey's full name is Smokey Bear, though he's often mistakenly called Smokey the Bear. The problem started in 1952 when a couple of songwriters, Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins, penning an ode to the popular firefighter, added a "the" to maintain the song's rhythm. Unfortunately, the song, "Smokey the Bear," become a hit and people have been confused about Smokey's name ever since. Here are few other facts about our nation's fire bear: Smokey was preceded as the Forest Service talking head by Bambi. Soon after the popular movie made its debut on August 13, 1942, Walt Disney gave the Forest Service permission to use Bambi and company in their fire prevention public service campaigns, but only for one year.

August 9 is Smokey's birthday. It's the anniversary of his first poster that came out a year after Bambi retired.

Smokey was a popular radio show guest during the 1950s. He also shows up often in comic strips and cartoons; recent appearances include The Far Side, The Simpsons, and South Park.

Smokey made guest appearances on TV and radio ads with such celebrities as Ray Charles, Bing Crosby, B. B. King, Art Linkletter, Roy Rogers, and Dinah Sh.o.r.e.

A school district in Hill City, South Dakota, uses Smokey Bear as its mascot, an honor they received after students volunteered to battle a devastating fire in the nearby Black Hills.

Poet Gary Snyder wrote a Buddhist chant called the "Smokey the Bear Sutra" that depicts Smokey as the reincarnation of the Great Sun Buddha.

There's a U.S. federal law protecting Smokey's name and image. The Smokey Bear Act of 1952 takes Smokey out of the public domain and mandates that all of his royalties go for education on forest fire prevention.

GLOBAL VOLUNTEERS.

transform a village in jamaica's blue mountains.

RURAL JAMAICA.

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on.

-Eleanor Roosevelt, former U.S. First Lady and social activist 11 Bob Marley, the Jamaican musician who almost single-handedly introduced the world to reggae, probably said it best: "We should all come together and create music and love, but is too much poverty.... The most intelligent people are the poorest people. Yes, the thief them rich, pure robbers and thieves, rich! The intelligent and innocent are poor, are crumbled and get brutalized daily."

And while tourists who visit Jamaica see gorgeous coastline, fancy all-inclusive resorts, and people living the high life, there's another side to this former British colony. In fact, the farther you travel into the interior, the worse conditions get-washed-out roads, crumbling homes, communities that are lucky to have one phone.

Global Volunteers (GV) works with four communities in Jamaica's misty Blue Mountains, exactly where they started when they launched their ground-breaking nonprofit organization in 1984. GV was one of the first organizations to send do-gooders on volunteer projects; USA Today called it "the granddaddy of the volunteer vacation movement."

The genesis for GV occurred four years earlier on a honeymoon. In January 1980, Michele Gran and Bud Philbrook were planning a barefoot honeymoon cruise in the Caribbean. "It was the era of the Vietnamese boat people," Philbrook recalls. "[Michele] didn't want to play while people were on the same water, fighting for their lives."

So they compromised; they spent five days at Disney World, Philbrook's childhood dream, and spent five days in rural Conacaste, Guatemala, helping villagers obtain funds for a much-needed irrigation project. After the local newspaper wrote a story about their unusual honeymoon, people started hounding them for info: How can we do the same thing? In 1984, Bud and Michele established Global Volunteers to provide people with an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others around the globe. Bud led the first two volunteer service programs that year, to Woburn Lawn, Jamaica, a sister village of Conacaste.

Since then, Global Volunteers has hooked up volunteers with hundreds of projects, from building schools in Ghana to caring for orphans in Romania to teaching English to children in China. Volunteers have done everything from tracking the kakerori in the Cook Islands, and constructing and repairing buildings in Tanzania to landscaping public s.p.a.ces in Costa Rica.

GOOD TO THE LAST DROP.

Rising as a backdrop to Kingston, Jamaica, the lush, rugged Blue Mountains are home to more than 500 flowering plants, 65 species of orchids, and a curious tree named Chusquea abietifolia that flowers, simultaneously, only once every 33 years. The next bloom is in 2017, in case you're wondering.

The Blue Mountains also grow what many believe is the world's best coffee. One of the believers was author Ian Fleming. James Bond, his alter ego, of course, wouldn't let anything but the very best-Smirnoff vodka, Brut blanc de blanc champagne, and Blue Mountain coffee-cross his spying lips. The Queen of England also drinks Blue Mountain coffee. Here are five other facts you may not know about this exclusive brew: The average price of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee beans is an astonis.h.i.+ng $55 per pound.

Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee beans sell for as much as $80 a pound in Tokyo, where a single cup has been known to fetch $25.

The j.a.panese purchase more than 90 percent of the Blue Mountain beans produced each year.

Blue Mountain coffee beans provide the flavor base for Tia Maria, a coffee liqueur which is made in Jamaica.

Around 1723, King Louis XV of France sent three coffee plants to the French colony of Martinique. Two of those coffee plants perished before landfall. However, either the third plant itself or some of its progeny were given to Sir Nicholas Lawes, the former Governor of Jamaica. By the early 1800s, the island boasted more than 600 coffee plantations.

In Jamaica over the years, GV volunteers have painted cla.s.srooms, built school chairs and desks, installed water systems, expanded a community center, improved local church facilities, constructed footbridges, and cleared brush from an old coffee plantation. They've even performed well-baby exams and offered health-care services to home-bound senior citizens. The four Jamaican communities with whom GV has been working with for 25 years let the team manager know beforehand what projects are most needed in any given year.

Which brings up an excellent and essential point about volunteer vacations. A good volunteer organization works under the tutelage of those they serve. Their purpose is not to come up with projects they think are needed. How are they to know, sitting at their American desks, looking through their American lenses at what a rural community in the wilds of Jamaica might need? Global Volunteers, like all good volunteer organizations, constantly critiques and a.s.sesses the impact they're having.

A two-week program, including lodging with a host family and all meals, runs $1,995.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Global Volunteers, 375 East Little Canada Road, St. Paul, MN 55117, 800-487-1074 or 651-407-6100, www.globalvolunteers.org.

CARIBBEAN VOLUNTEER EXPEDITIONS.

preserve a caribbean treasure.

ISLANDS ACROSS THE CARIBBEAN.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.

-Author unknown 12 Anne Hersh, the architect who started Caribbean Volunteer Expeditions (CVE), calls the work of her nonprofit "preservation in paradise." She started the agency in 1990 after her own volunteer stint doc.u.menting a slave village and cemetery in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She recognized right away the importance of preserving the Caribbean's rich heritage and the lack of resources dedicated to doing so.

Even though universities offer degrees in historic preservation, money for historic preservation is scarce. Imagine the need in tiny countries like St. Kitts or Nevis that didn't even achieve independence from Britain until 1983. And because Caribbean islands too often are the first to be hit by the battering rams of summer and fall hurricanes, time is of the essence.

CVE recruits volunteers for six to ten trips each year. Working with the island's national trusts, museums, national park services, and local historic societies, volunteers work to preserve everything from colonial-era forts to historic gardens to pre-Columbian archaeological sites.

"Some people in the islands have overlooked the great history their ancestors left for them. The fact that our volunteers think it's important enough to fly to the islands and spend their vacations doc.u.menting and preserving these invaluable sites and genealogical records creates a sense of national pride," Hersh says.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, BLACKBEARD, AND YOU.

San Salvador, one of 700 islands in the Bahamas, is where the famous explorer first made landfall in 1492. CVE volunteers are mapping the ruins of a plantation on this easternmost Bahamian island that was also a popular haunt for the infamous pirate Blackbeard. Working with archaeologist John Winter, volunteers haven't unearthed any pirate booty yet, but they have found ancient artifacts from native Indians, as well as Spanish and other European colonists.

Projects vary by island, but some of the most popular ones are cemetery inventory and archaeology projects. Working alongside preservationists, architects, and historians, you'll piece together ruins and walls, survey old buildings, computerize archives, and take inventories of weathered grave stones. Or you could sign on for some light construction, such as the wattle-and-daub house CVE volunteers built in St. Eustatius, a tiny 8-square-mile island in the West Indies.

CVE has projects throughout the Caribbean, including the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Vincent, Grenada, Nevis, and St. Kitts. Since 1997, CVE has also offered programs for those 55 and older that are booked through Elderhostel (www.elderhostel.org). Families can be accommodated on some projects; contact CVE to inquire.

Volunteers usually knock off after five hours of work to swim, hike, or visit other historic sites on the island. The trips are often planned to coincide with island festivals, complete with parades, music, and local food.

CVE programs typically run seven days, Sunday to Sunday, usually between November and March when Caribbean weather is on its best behavior. Costs range from $800 to $1,500, depending on the location, and include lodging-usually at a beachside resort-and some meals.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Caribbean Volunteer Expeditions, P.O. Box 388, Corning, NY 14830, 607-962-7846, www.cvexp.org.

EARTHWATCH.

monitor climate change.

ARCTIC CIRCLE, MANITOBA, CANADA.

Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can't afford the risk of inaction.

-Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of global media conglomerate News Corp.

13 Skeptics! Be gone! The 2007 report of the UN-established Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a panel that reeled in the n.o.bel Prize that year, put to rest any remaining skepticism on whether climate change was real. But we still don't know how fast the time bomb is ticking.

That's what scientists at the Churchill Northern Studies Center (CNSC), a research facility at the edge of the Arctic in Manitoba, Canada, are trying to figure out. What exactly happens as the Earth warms up? What are the consequences? How much time do we have?

So far, we know this: As the world warms, permafrost thaws. While that might not sound terribly threatening, permafrost contains a ma.s.sive amount of carbon. When it melts, as it's starting to do with increasing speed, carbon dioxide and methane-the biggest greenhouse gas culprits-are released into the atmosphere, creating a vicious cycle of even more thawing.

This remote and rugged outpost is on the coast and within the Hudson Bay Lowlands, situated at the mouth of the Churchill River. Because many different biomes can be found in the vicinity, including forest, forest-tundra, tundra, wetland/peatland, estuarine, and marine, it's particularly susceptible to warming temperatures and the changes that they cause. And since at least 20 percent of the world's carbon is locked in these Arctic wetlands, it serves as the proverbial canary in the mine shaft. The best case scenario is a dramatic alteration of this region alone. In the worst case scenario, climate change will catastrophically affect all life on the planet.

THE BEAR TRUTH.

Churchill, located in Manitoba, Canada, is the self-proclaimed "polar bear capital of the world." The town's 800 residents appreciate the throngs of tourists that are drawn here to see the 1,600-pound animals that migrate through the area each October and November. Yet in the interest of safety, they've been forced to instigate a 24-hour Polar Bear Alert program to address those hungry bears that inadvertently lumber into town.

The first tack taken to keep the tiny town free of polar bears is to meet intruding bears with earsplitting "cracker sh.e.l.ls." Polar bears who make more than one foray into town are tranquillized and take the paddy wagon to polar bear jail, a holding tank near the airport that can house up to 30 bears. The inmates are then kept hydrated with snow until they can either be helicoptered away from the area or let out to cross the frozen bay. Giving the captive bears food is a strict no-no, a lesson learned after past inmates returned to tried to break into the jail.

The polar bear, or Ursus maritimus, mainly eats seals, but they have been known to attack humans. They have a keen sense of smell and can move quickly. Chief among the guidance from leaflets handed out to tourists and the knowledge of polar bear authorities: Do not run.

Do not play dead.

Do not try to outswim a polar bear.

Do not make direct eye contact, which is a sign of aggression.

Do not dress up like a seal (okay, that one's a tongue-in-cheek reference to Halloween, which occurs during polar bear season, complete with bear patrol).

Scientists have been conducting climate change research in this dramatic environment since the 1970s. But there's only so much a couple scientists with 365 days can do. In 2000, as the climate change issue heated up along with temperatures, the number of research sites in the area rose from four to eleven. In short, volunteers allow them to accelerate their timely, desperately needed research.

If you volunteer for this project, you'll stay at the research center and use ground-penetrating radar, microclimate data loggers, and soil coring to calculate organic carbon content. You'll also live-trap small mammals, evaluate growth rings of trees and shrubs, and monitor plant development. If you go in the winter, you'll travel by qamutik, sled in Inuit, to cla.s.sify ice crystals, measure snowpack, and record temperatures.

Churchill, located in the largest mountain wilderness in North America, is a spa.r.s.ely populated outpost on the sh.o.r.es of Hudson Bay. There's no road, so you either have to fly in or take a 36-hour train ride from Winnipeg. The CNSC, where you'll stay, is one of the world's premier research facilities and a former rocket testing site.

Activities include beluga whale-watching (some 57,000, the world's largest population, surface every summer), tundra buggy touring, and plenty of opportunities to see polar bears (pop. 1,200), golden eagle, moose, elk, and caribou. It's also the best spot on the planet for viewing the northern lights. Choose one of the winter trips and you can even build and sleep in an igloo, comfortable down to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.