I want you to be selfish this month. Do something that will make you feel good about yourself and give you a sense of pride and accomplishment. Volunteer!

If you are like me and enjoy the outdoors, then combine that passion with volunteering at your local Parks and Recreation Department. They need the help! The people who manage our city, state and national parks have a thankless job, are overworked and for the most part only have time to perform the basics of park management: cleaning up restrooms, keeping picnic areas clean and in good working order and greeting and talking to the visiting public.

They usually have huge geographic areas to cover and simply do no have the time for anything else. I was introduced to the volunteering in the winter of 2006 when the company I worked for had a National meeting in Las Vegas in January. Instead of spending our “free� day like we normally did, golfing, at the spa or just relaxing, our company organized volunteer projects we could choose from.

I chose a trail restoration project at Lake Mead where we spent the day restoring a nature trail that the rangers used for nature walks with elementary school classes in the spring and fall. We had 20 people participate on this project and we completed over 1 ½ miles of trail restoration at the park. The Park Ranger was amazed and told us it would have taken him over 2 weeks to complete what we did in one afternoon. He couldn’t say thank you enough.That was the first time I felt it. The feeling you get when you give something to someone that they truly appreciate and you expect nothing in return. The Power of Giving!

That 5 hour experience and the feelings it awakened in me were the driving force behind the Clean Trails group we now sponsor in our home town of Glendale, Arizona. We work with the city on their Adopt a Trail program and have adopted the Thunderbird Park trail system in north Glendale as our trail. Thunderbird Park contains 1,185 acres of natural Sonoran desert landscape with over 20 miles of hiking, biking and running trails. We work with Charlie Hixon, Park Ranger, on projects in the fall, winter and spring with our 6-8 member team. We completed 4 projects in the last year with plans for 2 more before the hot summer forces us to take some time off. Our projects consist of whatever Charlie needs us to do and usually include trash pick up along the 3 miles of fence line in the park, trimming weeds and trees, trail restoration and removing weeds and overgrowth that will pose a fire hazard in the summer.

These are all things Charlie would not be able to do without our help. In addition to the heartfelt “Thanks� we get from Charlie we always hear from people using the park who thank us for doing what we do, thank us for making the trails safer, thank us for helping preserve that natural beauty…. You get the picture.

I enjoy being out in the desert during these projects, it is truly a beautiful place to interact with nature but what I enjoy more is what I feel like afterwards. I can’t describe it to you but I guarantee that if you volunteer your time and efforts you’ll feel it too!