I have the best job. All I ever wanted out of a career was to meet interesting people, travel a little, and make the world a measure more beautiful. Imagine, then, how I felt coming back from a four-day excursion from San Diego to Denver, Colorado, joined by some of the most engaged and forward-thinking environmentalists, and out into the Rocky Mountains National Park. It's been a few years since Groundwork San Diego has been able to send representatives to the Groundwork USA Annual Assembly & Youth Summit, and my youth, Yvezee and Lerner, and I are so very fortunate to be the first group of local delegates to make a return to the national networking scene. First, a little background:
Groundwork is an international organization of independent environmental trusts in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. There are about forty Groundwork trusts in the States and they convene once a year to network to share goals, challenges, and best practices with colleagues. The location changes; this year's conference was hosted by Groundwork Denver, and so we spent one evening at a Ramada in Denver and two more at the YMCA of the Rockies, the largest (and possibly the most luxurious) YMCA in America.
The first evening, we checked into the hotel and walked a few blocks to Groundwork Denver's office. Dinner was catered outdoors, in between buildings, and entirely vegetarian. I greatly enjoyed the Waldorf salad and the pita with a variety of different hummus (what's the plural of hummus?). A DJ maintained an upbeat atmosphere, despite the rain in the courtyard. The youth returned to the Ramada after dinner for a team-building activity. Technically, I think I was supposed to go back for that as well, but I stayed behind to meet Executive Directors of other trusts and to hear tell of Groundwork Denver's latest endeavors (including a campaign designed to simultaneously draw customers to the city's local, independent businesses and provide those customers with modest discounts, as well as to promote walking, biking, or taking public transit instead of driving. I even met one man who was formerly involved in Groundwork San Diego, and knew more about our trust than I do!
The next morning, I woke up around 5:30 and had a little time for morning time yoga in my hotel room, which turned out to be a great thing—when we reached our destination in the Rockies, I had signed up for a 5.6 mile hike, and if you're as huge a fan of the film Zombieland as I am, you know it's actually very important to limber up. Breakfast consisted of a made-to-order omelet, apple slices, and a cup of the worst coffee I've ever tried to disguise with flavored creamer. Executive Directors were saddling up for a bicycle tour of Denver, followed by a day of workshopping, while the youth and youth leaders were on our way out of town by 7 AM, and this is the point where I made my biggest mistake of the trip: all were issued with warm fleeces and windbreakers on the first night when we signed up for hikes. I packed both in my suitcase, meaning to put them on when we got there...but we were fated to be separated, my luggage and I. One van took everyone's luggage. Three vans took all the youth and youth leaders, and we were not to see the luggage van until we came back from the hike that afternoon. Oops! I managed with an extra sweater borrowed from Shane and a plastic rain poncho gifted by the National Park staff. My toes were numb for the first half hour of our hike, but I did contrive to keep my high tops completely dry despite the rain.
My hike was one of the more strenuous, but it had to be the most enjoyable! On the way to Mills Lake, our guide, Dennis, told us stories of his various vertical expeditions, and related tales of unfortunate hikers, like the one who found himself stranded 400 feet off the trail head in deep snow and had to wait out the night in a burrow (he was rescued, not recovered, the next morning). We were never bereft of gorgeous scenery; trees stretched before our eyes as far as the mountainous view permitted, and new geological wonders such as glacial erratics, large boulders left in unlikely formations by ancient glaciers, greeted us constantly as we progressed. A clear stream cascaded down the mountain beside our path. Half a mile, maybe, after we made a last crossing on a wooden footbridge, we reached Mills Lake, partially stopped by a beaver family's dam. The lake's expanse was bordered by low hills which gave way to larger, snow-capped peaks, such as The Arrowhead, rising far behind them. We stopped here to have lunch, a classy packaged affair. The vegetarian lunch was a sliced apple and brie sandwich, couscous, an apple, and a bag of chips. Just as we sat down to dine (glory!), the clouds opened up above and finally poured sunshine on us instead of condensed water vapor. I stripped off the clingy plastic poncho and my fingerless gloves (I came so well equipped) and skipped down the mountain at the tail of the group.
The conference only got better, I am pleased to report. That night, after a brief nap and dinner, I attended an all-youth leaders meeting at the Y of the Rockies. This was apparently the first year there was such a meeting, and again, I rejoice for the opportunity to attend this particular Assembly. The meeting ran as a free-form trouble-shooting session, and culminated with the gathering of everyone present's contact information and the agreement that we would reach out to each other for resources and support throughout the year. Out of all the planned activities, this one proved the most useful to me, and the most important conclusion I came away with is this: as a member of a small environmental nonprofit organization, it's easy to get to feeling like we are the only ones fighting for a cause that's bigger than us, both philosophically and in terms of capacity. It's all to easy to feel isolated, like we're the only ones in the corporate world who care. The Groundwork Assembly showed me differently; there is a whole network of like-minded individuals across the nation, and they care about the things I care about, and they face similar challenges, and we are all building a movement in our communities from the ground up. It's almost never easy, but it's totally righteous.
The next day was that of the Youth Summit. Everyone piled in the vans up to the mountains once more. When we arrived we were diverted for an hour or so into four service projects led by volunteer rangers; participants had the choice of building a snow fence to prevent erosion, of sweeping through campsites and cleaning them up, of taking part in the star thistle eradication effort, or of collecting seeds from wild roses for revegetation along a dirt road scheduled for maintenance. I went along collecting rose hips, which was entirely enjoyable—plus, we saw a large herd of elk on the ride back to the amphitheatre. The rest of the summit included a “Career Corral,” during which National Park and Fish & Wildlife employees informed the youth about their job descriptions and explained how they got started in their fields; a skit put on by Groundwork New Orleans and Groundwork Somerville; activities to gauge our communities and our involvement in them; and finally, an open forum on how to boost Green Team membership and interest. All was geared toward the youth, and I saw them responding positively and creatively. The Green Team skit was a work of especial entertainment.
The Youth Summit ended around four, and the rest of our time, we had free. There were informal networking sessions every night, during which I made innumerable contacts from around the country. The Groundwork Dallas Executive Director, Peter, has a scheme for a collaborative summer trip in 2012 between Dallas, San Diego, and Portland; I believe that footage of our Green Team's August expedition to Santa Monica and the Channel Islands will soon be featured on Groundwork Richmond's daily Green Screen Team Broadcast (if you haven't yet seen that video, do that
here!); and if we ever make it up to the National Parks in San Francisco, I know I'll be calling on Ranger Matt.
In conclusion, I can't say enough good things about the Groundwork Assembly experience this year. My youth made lots of friends, I made lots of friends, and my youth and I bonded more than we could have in any normal setting (seriously, they call me Mom now). The time and dedicated effort it takes to keep our projects and programs running successfully makes it difficult to put work aside, even for something so important, but I'm so glad that the powers I report to saw fit to give me the time to attend the national conference with Lerner & Yvezee. Our attendance at the conference benefits us by renewing our connection to our parent organization and other trusts across the country, and introducing new concepts we can apply to our programming. Best of all, it reminded me how much I love my job!
