Feeling good, doing good

Does your idea of fun include getting outdoors and spending some quality time with terrific people, making new friends, and laughing a lot? How about working really hard, getting really dirty, but feeling like you've accomplished something at the end of a long day?

If so, consider volunteering for one of the organizations that helps maintain hiking and biking trails, parks, wilderness and natural areas throughout New England.

After all, those wonderful trails we walk and ride on don't happen by accident. And beaches, campsites and boat launches aren't self-cleaning. It takes lots of planning, coordination, and, yes, occasional hard labor, to keep the forces of decay -- both natural and man-made -- at bay.

A job for everyone

What, precisely do volunteers do? Well, it sort of depends on you and the organization you choose to volunteer for. You could volunteer to answer phones, send out mailings, update the website and answer the questions from people who know less than you do.

But if that sounds a little too much like everyday work, volunteers are always sought for jobs such as cutting and removing brush, building bridges, painting blazes, maintaining shelters and whatever else needs to be done.

My own personal propensity has been for trail building and maintenance, sort of the big guns of the outdoor volunteering world. If you've never done it, you might have a hard time imagining that pure hard manual labor can be that much fun. But it is. Hard work is a terrific stress reliever. Almost everyone in our hyper-speed society would benefit from a day or week spent working at the pace of hand tools.

Most tree cutting these days is done with a chainsaw, but there's a certain satisfaction in swinging an axe to cut a tree, or manning half of a buck saw to cut it to length. You lose yourself in the rhythm of the tools. Even using a simple pair of loppers to trim back encroaching brush can be satisfying -- especially when you look back and see a swath of clear trail behind you.

If you've never swung a Pulaski (a purely wonderful combination of an axe head and grub hoe on a long handle ) to break out a flat trail traversing a steep slope, you're missing one of life's simple pleasures. Ditto with using shovel, pickaxe and crowbar to move a rock that, when you first looked at it, seemed immovable. This is especially true when you roll that rock into place to make a perfect step that won't move or erode under the stress of weather and hiking boots.

You can learn a lot about yourself and your hidden abilities working hard on a volunteer trail crew. You can also learn even more about other people. When no one person can move a rock, it takes real teamwork to get the job done. No contrived corporate or school "team building" exercise ever taught as much about cooperation and goal achievement as simply working together to roll a big rock. Too bad more corporations and schools don't encourage their employees and students to volunteer.

Overflowing with opportunities

Every organization that has anything to do with the outdoors needs volunteer labor. Here are just a few that I've encountered recently. If you don't find what you are looking for, check with your local outdoor or bike shop:

The American Hiking Society acts as a clearing house for events all over the northeast, including hikes, bike rides and trail maintenance.

Appalachian Mountain Club. The AMC holds dozens of volunteer work days, weekends and weeks over the course of a year in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. 

Appalachian Trail Conservancy. Needs volunteers to help monitor, mark, maintain the 2,000+ miles of the AT from Maine to Georgia. This site has links to local chapters who need volunteers.

Trailwrights is a New England-based organization dedicated to improving and maintaining hiking trails. They run programs which teach other organizations how to lay out and maintain their own trails.

The New England Mountain Bike Association is the premier voice for fat-tire Tire riders in our region. They are active in all six states with trail protection and maintenance as well as competitions and events. 

Green Mountain Club. Offers "volunteer vacations" and internships doing trail and shelter maintenance throughout Vermont. These programs last well into September .

Maine Island Trail Association needs volunteers in its office year-round as well as volunteers for man booths at fairs and expos. In addition, a number of work days and island clean-ups are also held seasonally. 

Eastern Fat Tire Association has a "Pay Dirt" program where competitive mountain bikers get points for trail work with a number of organizations.

The Connecticut Forest and Park Association advocates for and maintains the extensive trails system that crisscrosses the Nutmeg State.