E-mail updates from Drew McIlreavy and Tom Hogge (3-10-03)
Day two took the group on an introductory visit to Red Top Meadows Treatment Center after a brief indulgence in tourist-fare: a photo-op at Teton Pass, a back-country ski area accessible only by foot and ski-able only with appropriate avalanche-safety kits.
After a short tour of the area, we were greeted by Bruce Burkland, RTM Program Director since 1985, who described the life of RTM and the role that the Hampden-Sydney group would play in that life and in the lives of the Center's fourteen residents.
The Center hosts boys who, for myriad reasons, do not fit in well with their peers in the Wyoming public schools system. Some have criminal offenses on their records. Most are status offenders, committing acts criminal only for minors, such as persistent truancy. RTM offers a highly structured and community-focused living environment designed to address the educational, emotional, spiritual and physical aspects of these students' lives.
 
Our purpose at the camp is ostensibly simple. We help RTM students and staff complete various projects requiring a bit of extra physical labor. On this introductory day, we joined with the boys to dig a twenty-yard trench in five-foot snow drifts to uncover and remove a broken water-pump hose. We also helped clear and level two rooms in the basement served by that pump.
The more exciting moments of the day came after Garrison Cox and Justin Domurat, with RTM staff, engineered the beginning of a snow-removal process on the roof of the RTM dining hall.
Digging through several feet of snow piled on the aluminum roof, the pair was soon joined by Wayne Easter and Aaron Bachenheimer as a team of about seven cracked through layers of ice to send mounds of snow sailing to the ground below that, because of the extent of snowfall in Jackson Hole, was a mere three feet below roof level in some places.
Our first dinner with the residents was a meal prepared, as most weekend meals are for RTM, by several residents and staff. The Center's cook works only during the week.
The dinner hour offered time for socializing and relaxation that saw Bachenheimer relive his hacky-sacking college days, Dozier serenade the residents by plucking out Dave Matthews and Metallica melodies on the guitar, and Haskins and Hogge suffer domination at the hands of thirteen-year-old chess wizard residents.
Working alongside residents with whom we would later share conversation and ketchup, each of us in the group have already enjoyed the short time we have spent in Jackson, as much for the freshness of views and experiences as for the openness of RTM residents and newly forming friendships.
But as with most students undertaking service-oriented projects, we will be left with more than merely wet socks and sweaty brows as indication of our week's work.
And we have yet to hit the slopes.
Diary from Wyoming
Day 1 (3-9-03)
Day 2 (3-10-03)
Day 3 (3-11-03)
Day 4 (3-12-03)
Day 5 (3-13-03)
Day 6 (3-14-03)
Final Report (3-26-03)
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