What I really wanted to talk about and do is to say THANKS to all of the people who have supported us over the last year on our projects:  Over 100 hours donated in the last year!  I also wanted to talk about building your volunteer groups and our success this season.  We started our group in January 07 with 4 members, all family and have grown to 16 members on our final project.  Still have the same family members but have added 2 family friends and a group of enthusiastic students from Arizona State Universities RAD Recycling Club.  RAD stands for Ready Aware Devoted and they truely are that!  They will have 10 members at our next project and we are going to get so much accomplished with their help.  So Thanks to all of you for you support!

My whole point in all of this is when you start your group, don’t get discouraged if you only have 2 or 3 or 4 members because 4 members X 2 hours work is one full day for a Park Ranger or whoever you are helping, it makes a difference.  Count on your family, friends but also find like minded groups and be persistant and people will join.  This takes effort on your part but believe me it’s worth every minute you spend.  I mentioned before how appreciative our Park Ranger is and how he marvels at how much we get accomplished in one 2 hour session.  I only wish we could do more and didn’t have to take the summer off. 

So I’m off to hibernate from volunteering at the park until next Fall.  Guess I will just have to find some indoor volunteering activities this summer!

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!