Community in Stewardship
A Wilderness Ranger’s Account of a Volunteer Event and an Impression of its Impact
by Rhett Spencer, Carson National Forest Wilderness Ranger; photos by Rhett Spencer, Richard Holmes and Yancey Ranspot
Early Friday morning, I’m sitting on the front porch of the Taos Cow drinking up coffee and fresh sunlight, eagerly anticipating the arrivals of Bjorn Fredrickson and Josh Parken. Bjorn is a public servant, working for the United States Forest Service (USFS) as the head of matters concerning Wilderness, Wild and Scenic Rivers, and Caves in Region 3 — Arizona and New Mexico. Josh, just like myself, is a Wilderness Ranger in the Carson National Forest (NF), employed through a partnership between the USFS and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance (NM Wild), a non-profit 501 ©(3) environmental organization, as stated by Mark Allison, Executive Director of NM Wild, “dedicated to the protection, restoration and continued respect of New Mexico’s wildlands and Wilderness Areas.”
They arrive, and we get to work.
We’re finalizing plans and confirming logistics for a stewardship project set to start at 0730 on Saturday, August 5th. The project sites are near four trailheads along the Hondo Canyon as you head east along Highway 150 to reach the Taos Ski Valley. Each of the four trails leads north, away from the bustling highway, and into the Columbine-Hondo Wilderness up deep and lush slot canyons.
The project is one aspect of a broader event titled “Connecting People with Public Lands & Sharing Stewardship of our Historical, Natural, Sacred and Special Places”. Hosted by Yancey Ranspot of the USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS), he through this event is inviting an amalgam of groups of outdoor stewards from the United States Fish and Wildlife Services (USFWS) Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge, from the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps (RMYC), from the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) and from the Albuquerque Sign Language Academy to the Carson NF to learn more about public lands management, Wilderness and Wilderness ethics, and perhaps most prominently, inclusivity within these realms. The event is to last the duration of the weekend, and Bjorn, Josh, and I have been told that we have the full force of this group at our fingertips for the entirety of Saturday. Forty-ish volunteers, working in this forest, from 0730 to 1630. We can’t believe our good fortune and are eagerly anticipating [finally] accomplishing a full laundry list of tasks we’ve been adding to throughout the season.
Satisfied with where we’re sitting at the end of our final prep day, we head over to the Taos Ski Valley to meet up with the participants as they settle into their accommodations. We’re greeted by 41 excited, gregarious, enthusiastic, overwhelm(ing)ed young adults dressed in their sun and sweat bleached crew t-shirts. It’s raining, and a lot of the members of the group are dancing outside in the Taos Ski Valley and saying that they can’t believe that they’re in New Mexico, nestled here between ephemeral peaks shrouded in storm, rising out of both the Columbine-Hondo and Wheeler Peak Wildernesses. It’s a great start to a wonderful weekend.
Saturday morning rolls around and I’m pacing about at the designated meeting spot, a USFS campsite just across the dirt-road from the Bull of the Woods trailhead. Pacing, because the weather forecast has taken a totally undesirable turn — heavy rain all day with a high chance of lightning in the early afternoon — and the grand plan is toast. Thankfully, Josh and Bjorn are there and already scheming towards adaptation. Ricardo Leon and Richard Holmes from the Carson NF Questa Ranger District are also present and helping, moving things forward and preparing the first activity we had planned: construction of Columbine-Hondo Wilderness boundary signs. Soon we’re joined by the Yancey and and the sleepy-eyed volunteers and things are underway, the plan now being… ‘flexibility’!
The day flew by before I knew it. Beautifully.
By 1630, we had as a group:
a. Prepared and constructed from mostly ‘raw materials’ six(!) new Columbine-Hondo Wilderness boundary signs to be installed by this and other groups in the future.
b. Participated not only in group readings of the 1964 Wilderness Act in its entirety and selected excerpts from Aldo Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac”, but also in healthy group discussions regarding our individual definitions of wilderness and the benefits of partnerships between groups striving to achieve a common goal.
c. Replaced and/or reconstructed water bars in the first 1–1.5 miles of the popular Bull of the Woods Trail 90.
d. Laughed a lot, done yoga, and learned quite a bit about each other.
Although we didn’t get close to addressing everything on that original laundry list, our rainy day stewardship project was undeniably successful. It was obvious in watching the volunteers interact with each other throughout the day. Teenagers were inviting 6 year olds to *carefully and under adult supervision* learn how use a drawknife to peel bark from cedar posts. Deaf and hard of hearing crew members were working on the same task as hearing crew members, together, without even a hint as to difficulty in communication — smiles abounding. Everyone gave their undivided attention to whomever was speaking during discussion and notes were being taken in personal journals. The maturity and love espoused by every participant in this event was truly remarkable. While watching everyone work and participating myself, I observed that when people practice stewardship of public lands and wild places there’s more to be gained than the obvious benefits to the land.
When we broke for evening to get ready for dinner, Yancey pulled me, Josh, Bjorn, Ricardo and Richard aside to ask if we wouldn’t mind extending the stewardship aspect of the event into Sunday, providing the volunteers the opportunity to ‘finish what they started’ and install four of the six boundary signs they had made.
“We wouldn’t mind at all.”
Sunday came and went, even faster than Saturday.
Now, if you’re driving along Highway 150 toward the Taos Ski Valley stop for a moment. Just beyond the trailheads of Yerba Canyon Trail 61, Manzanita Canyon Trail 58, Italianos Canyon Trail 59 and Gavilan Trail 60, you’ll encounter the first Columbine-Hondo Wilderness boundary signs to be installed, in their glory and splendor, notifying you and other visitors that you are about to step into a very special place. And now you’ll know that they were made during a very special event and through the collaboration of very special groups and people.
I’d like to extend thanks to every person and entity that participated in the RMRS “Connecting People with Public Lands & Sharing Stewardship of our Historical, Natural, Sacred and Special Places” event. I had a wonderful time and look forward to more collaborative projects in the future!
