Cleaning up the wilderness

Instead of just soaking up the sun on your next vacation, join one of several groups to help out an ailing Mother Nature.

By Everett Potter

When LeeAnn Perry of Tacoma, Wash., went to California's Point Reyes National Seashore on vacation, it wasn't to go beachcombing along the Pacific Ocean. She joined about a dozen volunteers brought together by the Sierra Club to remove invasive sea grass from sand dunes. Perry found the work so rewarding that she went back a year later to help widen a coastal trail in Limekiln State Park at Big Sur, using a pickax and sleeping in a tent in blazing heat, thick fog and driving rain. And she'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

"It was hard work," she recalls with a laugh. "But you become connected to the land. If I was just on vacation, I would never have felt ownership for that area."

For as little as $130 for people 18 and up, a week of your time and some physical labor, you can actively give back to the Earth. That's the premise of volunteer vacations sponsored by organizations like the American Hiking Society, the Sierra Club, the Appalachian Mountain Club and Wilderness Volunteers. You get to enjoy the pristine backcountry under the supervision of an experienced guide and sleep in tents or rustic lodges. Your meals are included, and volunteer work is combined with recreational activities and downtime.

The work typically involves clearing and maintaining trails, removing invasive non-native vegetation or cleaning up trash and campsites.

"This is not 'feel-good' work," stresses Tanya Tschesnok, a spokesperson for the Sierra Club. "We partner with the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service. They're underfunded and they have small staffs, and there's no way they can maintain and keep open the miles of trails in the United States. And projects like invasive vegetation removal require a lot of manpower and continual work."

This summer, you can join the Sierra Club on one of the service trips it has offered for 50 years that give assistance such as repairing trails in Montana's Glacier National Park, searching for archeological artifacts at Dixie National Forest in Utah and building bridges in the Selkirk Range of Idaho. The Sierra Club has about 80 weeklong trips every year, which attract about a thousand volunteers to the backcountry. Most weeks entail a cost of less than $600 a person; airfare is extra.

Wilderness Volunteers charges $239 for its weeklong trips. Spokesperson Susan Laarman says the group gets "all sorts of folks, from Navy pilots to construction workers, college professors and lots of folks who sit behind computers all day. But they all pitchin and are amazed at what the group can accomplish."

In New England, the Appalachian Mountain Club offers work trips, including an extensive program for teenagers, costing less than $200 a week. The American Hiking Society's trips, for people over 18, cost as little as $130, or $100 if you become a member.

"You can spend a week working on a trail," Tschesnok says, "and you can look back and really see that you made a lasting, noticeable difference."