Faith Works 6-9-07
Jeff Gill

The Best Things In Life Are . . .

One of the treasured memories of my marriage to the Lovely Wife is the trip we took for our tenth wedding anniversary when we went back to Zion National Park in southern Utah, and from there to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

We were not staying in the lodge within the park, but our camping set-up allowed us to go to the area laundry facility and showers. We used them the day after our hike down into the depths of the Canyon along Bright Angel Creek, where the temps got up into the high 80’s. Up on the North Rim, well above 7,000 feet, the snow fell gently that night among the pines. In fact, the campgrounds had opened later than their usual May 15 target, because the road in from Jacob’s Lake was buried in snowdrifts.

OK, enough nostalgia. Anyhow, I went into the campground showers, and saw something I’d never encountered before. The Marine Corps had introduced me to the experience of showering while a kindly, solicitous three-striped gentleman screamed at the top of his lungs “faster, faster, FASTER!” What I’d not seen was a coin operated shower head, where five quarters had to go in before water came out. It was, perhaps, more motivational than the sergeant had been.

Much later, while doing our wash, a park ranger came in to do their laundry, and as we talked I mentioned the coin-op shower, and the ranger smiled. He observed that we had hiked past the source of our fresh water, halfway down to the Colorado River, a place called Roaring Springs.

It was plentiful, and pretty expensive to pump up from there to the North Rim. Our quarters did not even put a dent in the cost of providing that fresh water. What the National Park Service was acutely aware of, even more broadly, was the relative scarcity of water throughout the region. We were high on the Colorado Plateau, most of which is desert.

They had tried to put signs up in the shower room, done talks at the firebowl, and tried a number of educational strategies to keep folks from taking a long shower, wasting water in the heart of a desert. None of them reduced water use. Then they found the coin-op shower fixtures.

With the advent of quarters for showers, the water use dropped by more than half. Keep in mind, this is $1.25 (in 1995, I don’t know what it is now) in a place where a slice of pizza was $3 and you spent hundreds, thousands even, to get to that spot. Five quarters. You put a precise price that feels like a price on it, and people value it. They’d thought about four quarters, but that didn’t seem quite enough (too much like a washing machine), so they tried five, and it worked.

All of which is to say to well-meaning youth workers and church staff: you need to charge something. Trip to the zoo, to the amusement park, to a Christian rock concert, whatever.

Even if you have generous support from your congregation (and good for them), charge something. It won’t cover the full price, and let kids and parents know that. But charge something. Even if you have poor kids – I mean, economically disadvantaged youth – charge something. Five bucks. Whatever. Maybe five quarters.

If you charge nothing, the value feels like nothing; if you charge nothing, then you will unintentionally or intentionally be taken for granted. Your last minute cancellations will be high, and your frustration level higher.

Are there occasional situations when even five bucks is too much? If you know your group, you know who that is, and you know how to quietly let them know it ain’t a problem. But charge something, so there is perceived value.

I’ve learned this lesson a number of ways, but none so sensibly than at a twilit campground on the edge of a desert and the Grand Canyon.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s collected fees, sometimes unsuccessfully, for a number of youth outings and trips. Tell him your work trip story at knapsack77@gmail.com.