If you want to find some encouragement in the world today, look no further than the volunteers in your own community.
Centralia, Washington is ripe with opportunities to do just that, so today I took one of those opportunities and joined a wonderful cross-section of our community to help rebuild a small section of forest at one of our most pristine natural areas in town.
The Seminary Hill Natural Area is one of Centralia’s most beloved treasures. Not just in my mind, but in a whole bunch of other folks, too.
It’s a pristine forest on a hillside just east of the city’s downtown core that features an extensive trail network that meanders for acres upon acres, giving everyone access to a beautiful stand of forest. It’s a part of Centralia’s park and open space system, and it’s rather unique for one reason: a lot of the maintenance is done by volunteers!
The Friends of Seminary Hill is a volunteer group that takes seriously the upkeep, maintenance, and thoughtful development of Centralia’s most pristine urban forest. They’ve been around for a few decades and have had a bunch of really dedicated folks that have spent months’ worth of time pulling ivy, building trails, beating back blackberries and more. It’s this labor of love that makes the natural area extra special.
Today the group tackled a longstanding challenge: There’s a section of the natural area that is devoid of much plant life and needs to be restored to health.
To set the scene, the natural area has a gravel parking lot, and just beyond it to the east is a brand-new ADA-accessible gravel trail. Next to that is an area that has been a bit matted down for years, devoid of much of the native plant life around it. This little draw next to a small creek doesn’t get a ton of sunlight, the ground immediately beneath is full of clay, and it’s a difficult area to grow stuff.
But today was our first step in remedying that! The task at hand called for planting somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 trees and native shrubs, all of which will hopefully take root and help restore the ecosystem in this tiny part of the natural area. Through a partnership with the Lewis Conservation District’s Stream Team and a generous donation of seedlings from the Grays Harbor Conservation District, the materials were there. Now we just needed the community to join the effort.
And join they did. I counted 27 people on hand today, with just about every single age group and demographic represented. We had many longtime Friends of Seminary Hill members, parents with young children, a group of students from W.F. West High School in neighboring Chehalis, members of our local Hispanic and Mexican-American community, and more. And they all joined for one reason: to make where we live even better.
Captions of the above photos, from left to right: (1) Brian Mittge, president of the Friends of Seminary Hill, thanks everyone for attending; (2) Centralia resident Damian Bean plants an evergreen tree next to the ADA trail; (3) an hour of work yielded significant progress.
We all divided into teams, and I was able to gain the help of some intrepid young people who really ended up doing a wonderful job. For my part, I spent some time digging the holes that our team members would put the plants and shrubs in — and even though I couldn’t give full effort due to an injury (more on that in a later post), I was really happy to be able to participate and give a lift to the group.
It was inspiring to see everyone doing a variety of tasks: scurrying about delivering compost, planting the trees and shrubs, protecting what was planted, and by the end trying not to slip in the mud by the creek. It was a really great time and I didn’t see one person with a frown on their face at all.
Three hours of work went rather quickly. I guess the old adage “time flies when you’re having fun” really proves true sometimes, and today was one of those times. It didn’t even rain on us once during the time we were there. Watching longtime community members continue to invest in their city and seeing young kids join in with that effort ensured there were more roots planted today than just the ones done by hand.
A project like this really doesn’t take place without some wonderful and amazing generosity of community partners. Not only do people donate their time, but we even had food donated today from our local Quizno’s Sub eatery. In fact, Quizno’s has been a fantastic partner of the Friends group, donating sandwiches to workers for several years and maybe even beyond that. I personally am grateful to Quizno’s for their donations, especially considering it’s tough in the restaurant industry. What a wonderful gift!
By the end of the day, we had planted a variety of Douglas fir, Western red cedar, Western hemlock and bigleaf maple. Because we had so many volunteers, we were able to get a head start on some of the work we have to still do next week — planting the shrubs.
What a blessing it was to be able to take part in a project that might seem small to some, but in reality is a major component of helping restore needed habitat along one of our city’s recreational gems. I’m thankful for all the volunteers and friends from the place I’ve now called home for just over a decade.
I mentioned it earlier, but we have a second work day coming up Saturday, March 1, from 9 to noon. The Friends page over on Facebook has more details. All tools are provided; come join us and have a wonderful time meeting your neighbors!
Big thanks to everyone who made the start to this weekend so wonderful, and I can’t wait to see what this will look like when we get to see those trees and shrubs bring new life to the hillside.
