You'd be amazed at some people's idea of a vacation. For example, seven members of the American Hiking Society (AHS) came to the San Juans recently to spend their precious vacation time clearing brush, pulling weeds and maintaining trails.
The hikers are participants in a 30-year-old AHS program called Volunteer Vacations. Nick Teague, Outdoor Recreation Planner at the Lopez office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), began planning this first Volunteer Vacation in the San Juan Islands last year in partnership with the AHS, Washington State Parks,
Teague said the participating agencies joined in the
BLM's "four C's -- communication, cooperation, and collaboration, all in the spirit of conservation -- to ensure these people had a positive, memorable experience."
Six women and one man, ranging in age from 36 to 61, came to Lopez from Pennsylvania, Ohio, California, Oregon, and Washington, paying $75 each for a week of meals and free camping at Odlin County Park. In return they logged as many as eight hours of hard work a day amounting to $3680 of labor, nearly balancing the BLM's expenses of $3750 for administrative costs, food, kayaking, and transportation.
The volunteers removed a 30x40x15 foot bank of Himalayan blackberries at Cattle Point on San Juan, where the non-native vines are encroaching on the habitat of the marbled butterfly, song sparrows and savannah sparrows.
"I took one look at that wall of blackberry vines and thought, 'No way,'" said volunteer Debbie Cooke of Seattle. "But we did it."
The hikers blazed new trails at Odlin Park and the San Juan County Land Bank's Fisherman Bay Spit Preserve, and cleared weeds and replaced fire rings at campsites on Patos Island. After long hours of work, they enjoyed kayaking, sailing, and eating S'mores around the campfire.
Debbie Cooke of Seattle, who has taken ten Volunteer Vacations all over America, said this was the best she's ever experienced and gave Teague high marks for his positive spirit. Although it was ranked "Easy to Moderate" in the AHS catalog of over 100 vacations, Cooke said the work was "physically very demanding... but some of us like that." She said she loves hiking and likes "giving something back to the trails."
"All the projects were completed in the time frame we'd allotted for them," Teague said, "so the volunteers got to have a sense of completion and accomplishment."
He intends to continue the program in the coming years.
© Copyright 2007 Islands Weekly (Reprinted with permission from the Islands Weekly)
