Melanie Has Never Had a Better Time

Last year was my first time volunteering at Summer Camp on the Green Team, and honestly, it’s hard to choose just one moment. Therefore, I’ll share a few! My first shift was Thursday night and I was over in the VIP section picking up trash and also helping people carry their stuff because at this point, there wasn’t much trash to pick up. I remember the funniest thing was my whole shift I was watching a guy walk back and forth to his car and every time he would walk back, he’d have a whole new outfit on. And I’m not talking about a simple change of clothes but a well thought out festival outfit and some of the craziest stuff I have seen. The next day I had a morning shift and my job was to clean up Starshine after a long night of scampers raving hard over there. It was one of the most perfect mornings because there was not a cloud in the sky, the sun was shining, and most scampers were still asleep so there was this peacefulness just floating through the air. And while I was picking up all of the leftover trash and changing the garbage bags from the previous night, there were sound checks going on at the Starshine stage and in that moment, there was no place or nothing else I would rather be doing. Along with that, I talked to another volunteer who was just a general volunteer working the VIP gate near Starshine. I remember him asking me why do the Green Team with the mandatory sorting shift when you could just do general volunteer? And well, my response was that yeah the sorting shift can get a little gross but I love the environment and having the opportunity to help keep my home, our home, Summer Camp clean is totally worth picking through garbage. Funny thing too, we ended up randomly running into each other twice at Bonnaroo in June! Crazy how the world becomes so much smaller when you volunteer at festivals and meet some of the kindest strangers. Finally, my last shift was a morning shift on Sunday and it was my sorting shift. I’m not going to lie, at times things smelled a lot and certain things I did not want to touch. But the small group of us at that shift made it a hoot blasting music, sharing stories from the weekend, and just laughing that made the shift fly by. I’ve volunteered at a lot of different festivals and can hands down say, I’ve never had a better time than I did on the Green Team at SCamp nor have I worked with a better group of volunteers and leaders!