LNT (Leave No Trace) Volunteer Instructions

Thank you for volunteering with the Leave No Trace (LNT) crew! We appreciate your efforts to help us keep the land free of matter out of place (MOOP). If you have any questions or suggestions before or after the event, please email LNT@fireflyartscollective.org. We'll leave contact information at MOMM if you need to get in touch with a core lead during the event. See below for descriptions of our volunteer positions.

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Lost & Found Hero

As a Lost & Found hero, you will make the rounds to the major theme camps to collect items lost at the camp and bring them to the Lost & Found. Along the way, you should feel confident proclaiming good LNT practices, picking up any MOOP you encounter, and encouraging other Fireflies to do the same. Also spread the word about the location of the Lost & Found -- it is your mission to ensure all that Lost Things are Found! Shifts are 2-4 pm Wednesday through Saturday and 9-11 am on Sunday (Exodus).

To start your shift, come to MOMM (aka the Museum of Modern MOOP, aka the event Lost & Found), which is in Upper Field along Butterfly Boulevard.

Take the pumpkin tote bags for Lost & Found items and walk around to theme camps asking if they have any Lost & Found items for you to take to MOMM. Every theme camp has a camp LNT lead who should be leading their campmates in daily MOOP sweeps and identification of Lost & Found items, so they shouldn’t be surprised to see you. If they're unprepared, let them know someone will be around again tomorrow at the same time!

While one of your goals is to collect Lost & Found items, you’re also valuable in just reminding people about the Lost & Found and about LNT in general. If you would like to take one of our grabbers and a ziplock bag with you to do some intentional and visible MOOP* sweeping of trash while on your Lost & Found loop, that would be great! (And you can leave your trash ziplock at MOMM after your shift.)

When you return to MOMM, please fill out the brief form in the binder asking how many items you collected, just so we can track MOMM activity and make potential changes to volunteer shifts in future years.

If you have extra time while waiting for your buddy at the start of your shift or if you get back to MOMM early, feel free to do some museum curation or general tidying of the space.

*MOOP = matter out of place, which includes both lost items and trash items

Compost Collector

As a Compost Collector, you’ll start your shift at Nexus / Upper Parking, and look for the red metal cart that you will use for your shift. (Since there’s only one cart, please be on time so you can find your compost collecting buddies before setting out!)

Your job is to take the cart up the hill and give people the AMAZING gift of offering to empty their compost bucket for them! You’ll collect buckets from camps, deposit compost in the pile, return empty buckets to camps, repeat as time allows, and return the cart to upper parking.

We recommend starting at the top of the hill so you don’t need to drag full buckets uphill.

At the end of your shift, please go to MOMM to sign in for your shift and fill out a brief form in the binder asking for an estimate of how many buckets you collected, just so we can track composting activity and make potential changes to volunteer shifts in future years.

Lost & Found Barker & Breakdown

Break down the Lost & Found infrastructure to get handed off to DPW for storage, while also reminding passersby to check the Lost & Found for any missing items.

To start your shift, come to MOMM (aka the Museum of Modern MOOP, aka the event Lost & Found), which is in Upper Field along Butterfly Boulevard. There you'll find instructions, a volunteer shift sign-in book, and instructions for whom to contact with any questions.

This shift is 11 am-1 pm on Sunday (Exodus).

Barker Duties

• Be loud. Get people into MOMM to look around just in case; it's impressive how many people don't realize they lost an item until they see it displayed on a MOMM shelf.
• Because people will ask: No, they can't take things that aren't theirs even thought it's the end of exodus. We continue to return items after the event.

Lost & Found Items

• Unless the sky/ground is too wet to make this possible, please lay out or hang any wet items to dry.
• Remove items from bins and try to make everything visible from the path. With this shift, MOMM's goal changes from "Make lost items art!" to "Make it easy for people to find their lost stuff."
• If you have time, sorting items into categories and folding clothes, etc. is helpful but not necessary.

Small MOMM Infrastructure

• There will be a supplies bin in the back of MOMM where you can neatly store small items such as lights, whiteboards, etc.
• Remove batteries from anything battery operated before storing.
• Take down the lights, please please please making sure to neatly coil the fairy lights.
• Stack the whiteboards.
• Untie markers and erasers and put them into ziplock bags.
• Keep bins in a separate pile from the large infrastructure; an LNT core lead will handle these.

Large MOMM Infrastructure

• Shelves: All the shelving breaks down flat. Look in the supplies bin for rope to tie together similarly shaped pieces of wood for easy transportation.
• Easy up: Take down the easy up. Its bag should be in the supplies bin.
• Lockbox: Someone with a code will do a final check of Val, the valuables safe.
• All large infrastructure should be placed in one pile near (but not in) the UTV path to be picked up.

Field Sweep Crew

On the final day of the event, volunteers will gather to do a line sweep of the Bug Burn Field. This shift involves picking up pieces of MOOP (matter out of place) from the field. You will be provided with a bag for MOOP that you find and it will be collected at the end of the shift.

Be sure to dress for the weather! Hats with brims and umbrellas are great ideas if it’s a sunny afternoon. We’ll have some sunscreen, bugspray, and water, but please bring your own if you have it.

Meet at the top of the bug field, near where the coffee table is during the event.

This shift is 2:30-4:30 pm on Sunday (Exodus). Be sure to coordinate with your own camp to ensure you can meet your obligations both to camp breakdown and to the field sweep.

Field Sweep Leader / Parking Lot Sweep Leader

Wrangle a bunch of us into a straight-ish line and lead us across a field looking for shiny things in the grass. Weirdly meditative, also a lot like the game "Red Light Green Light," ideal for those skilled in herding cats. Prior field sweep experience is helpful but not required, and an LNT core lead will be there to help out as well. We sweep the fields in the afternoon of exodus day, and the parking lots the following day during land sweep/late crew.

Shift timing aligns with the regular field sweep crew and land sweep crew shifts.

LNT Land Sweep Crew

This is LNT's late crew shift, and it is, first off, awesome.  You will be heralded as a champion, included in the Lore of Future Fireflies...or at the very least loved by your campmates. Land sweep volunteers stay an extra day on the land to conduct a Firefly-wide MOOP sweep.  We sing, we are merry, we work hard, and we go home tired but laughing. Generally LNT land sweep is finished by 2 or 3 pm. Note that this is a full-day LNT late crew shift that takes place the day after exodus (Monday).

Sunday Logistics

• OPTIONAL 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm: Field sweep at the bug field (this is a separate volunteer shift, but feel free to join if you’re available)
• 7-8 pm: LNT potluck and brief meeting at Meat Camp. Please bring food to share if you have it! Participation is encouraged but not mandatory. (This is fun & delicious.)
• Tents: You can leave your tent wherever it is from Sunday night through Monday morning. However, it's a good idea to start packing up whatever you can tonight so you're not rushing in the morning.
• Cars: After Exodus is complete on Sunday, you can move your car to Nexus / Upper Parking (where it will need to be by 8 am Monday morning). If your car is cleared for hill access, you may instead park it closer to your campsite on Sunday evening. If you do this, park your car fully off the road, ideally in a loading zone, and leave as much space as possible for other vehicles to pull in if needed. All cars must be in Nexus / upper parking by 8 am Monday morning.

Monday Logistics

• *Before* 8 am: break down your tent, pack up your gear, and move cars to Nexus / upper parking. Everything must be off the hill before we start the MOOP sweep.
• 8-8:45 am: potluck breakfast and LNT briefing at Meat Camp. Please bring food to share if you have it!
• 9 am: We start the matter out of place (MOOP) sweep. Depending on weather, we’ll likely start with group field sweeps of the parking lots. Once parking lot sweeps are completed, we’ll assign different people different sections of the hill and disperse to sweep those.
• Around 1 pm: Pizza party!!
• After lunch: Finish sweeping the hill.
• Around 3 or 4 pm: We finish with the land sweep! At this point you will be free to leave or…
• OPTIONAL Evening: You can help out DPW’s breakdown crew, who always work later into the evening than we do. DPW sums up the breakdown tasks you could help them with as “picking things up and putting them down,” and these more specifically include: hopping in a polaris with DPW folks driving around picking up items to deliver to the barn; being at the barn receiving items and tetrising them into storage; helping sort stuff labeled trash and tossing it into the dumpster; taking down shade structures; putting away tables, chairs, trail lights, etc; and helping to remove tenax (the green mesh road protection stuff).

Be sure to dress for the weather. Hats with brims and umbrellas are great ideas if it’s sunny. We’ll have some sunscreen, bugspray, and water, but please bring your own if you have it.

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