Monique Auge-Bodin

A stay-at-home Moms place…is outside

Featured Volunteer — November 2007

by Tim Boyle

To Monique Auge-Bodin, volunteering in the river gorge with her son, family and friends means many things. Whether pulling garlic mustard or picking up trash, Monique is expressing her personality, enjoying and further instilling a family value, and reveling in a unique and authentic sense of community.

Photo by Hillary Oppmann

While Monique Auge-Bodin embraces the stay-at-home mom title, youd be lucky to catch her at her Saint Paul home on the average day. For Monique, life is about living your values, and for her and her home-schooled son Gavin, that means getting outside.

Sometimes you do your day-to-day tasks and arent able to tap into your spirit, says Monique. Volunteering for FMR, she says, allows her to not only express a core value, appreciating nature, but instill such values in 5-year-old son Gavin.

And not all the volunteering opportunities we tried were always as welcoming to kids, she noted. At the five Gorge Stewards events she and Gavin participated in this year, Monique says event leaders smiled and interacted with Gavin — small things, but they mean a lot to a parent.

Monique believes the hands-on modeling is essential — she likes how Gavin sees that volunteer work is something people like to do, not just another thing his parents think he should do.

She said the events are well organized and easy to fit into (nobody is patronizing, even when theyre the experts), which contributes to something that is hard to find: a sense of community. She says this community is special — that it has hard-to-find integrity. This stems from peoples sincere desire to be there, as opposed to a more artificial group experience, such as a compulsory class outing or other obligatory arrangement.

Monique said she was so charged after her first event, she was just giddy. Her introduction to the gorge was the April Pledge-to-Pull kickoff and training, after which she and Gavin committed to pulling garlic mustard from the river flats, on their own time.

Not only did Monique complete their pledged hours, she brought family and others in her home school social circle to the flats, teaching them about the invasive species and introducing them to the Gorge Stewards program. She also brought a group of 15 home schooling parents and children to the gorge last month, where she shared her knowledge of the area as everyone picked up trash.

When asked if she thought shed enjoy pulling plants and picking up trash when she was in high school, Monique replied, Not at all. Not even after college at Saint Kates, where she completed her psychology degree. It was pregnancy that triggered reflection, and her desire to act her values.

Now Im trying to push my kid outside, enjoying our garden and doing worm-composting! The volunteering carries over to our home-life and makes me realize its easy to do on your own.

Monique added that, like others, she feels a respect and connection with the river and would not live any other place than the Saint Paul area. She especially likes the Mendota village area, where the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers converge just south of the gorge. Her grandfather grew up here and often told stories about it. We have some Lakota and French fur-trading heritage and the river has always been a part of that.

She says she may consider other FMR areas, but for now prefers Gorge Stewards programming, in part because of accessibility. Thats another great thing about it, she quips, you stop and look at some of the places you might normally drive right by.

Tim Boyle is a freelance writer and photographer and fellow FMR volunteer, and can be reached via e-mail.