My name is Tyler Merrill, Field Coordinator for Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, and I have a story for you.
I was sitting in church one Sunday with my Dad and Grandfather when I was 15 or 16 years old. The church service we went to wasn't actually held in a "real" church - they held it in a big community center that seated over a thousand people. They had such a huge congregation that they had to use a big projector so that everyone could see the preacher. Anyway, we were sitting there before the service started one morning and my Dad reached out and pulled a little pencil out of the pouch on the back of the seat in front of him - each chair had a pouch on the back that held pencils and little envelopes, so that people could donate anonymously when the collection plates went around. So my Dad pulls the pencil out of the pouch in front of him and looks at it kind of funny. Then he looked all around the room, and then he looked at my Grandfather and I and said
"Who d'ya think sharpens all of these?"
I didn't say anything, but I looked around the enormous room and my eyes went wide. Over a thousand pencils, and they were perfectly sharp every week. I had never noticed that before, and I doubt anyone else had either. It's the kind of thing you wouldn't notice unless something was wrong - you'd certainly have noticed a dull pencil. It was an incontrovertible fact - the only way to ensure that every pencil was sharp was to have a person check every single pencil every single week. There was an actual person that went to all that effort and the great majority of people that benefited from it had never even noticed. They weren't there for the pencils, they were there for the church service.
I spent most of last week in Garfield County visiting project sites that our field crews will be working on this summer. The variety of work was exciting - building rock retaining walls, clearing corridor for fences and trails, maintaining old trail, cutting new trail tread. The crew that will be in Garfield County this summer will have a new work project almost every week. I'm super happy for them - changes of scenery can be great for crew morale, especially when you get to work in a place that looks like the pictures in the slideshow.
As I hiked all of the different trails the crew will be working on, I found myself remembering my Dad pulling that pencil out of the back of that chair. Like a sharp pencil, you don't notice well-made trail - you notice uneven tread, loose rocks, and steep grades. Trails are how the public enjoys nature. Ultimately, they're there for the views in those pictures. They're there to see wildlife. They're there for the physical challenge. They aren't there for the tread.
A new summer season of trail work is fast approaching, and I've got to say - I can't wait to get out there and sharpen some pencils.
