Standing on the shoulders of giants

I was surprised and incredibly humbled, today, mid-way through two weeks of annual leave with my family at Christmas time, to turn to the last page of the News Tribune and find my name among several others listed as "Outdoors Giants of 2010." It's all for coordinating the work of more than 2,000 volunteers this past year.

But none of that would have been possible without the help of so many partners from the community -- the Washington Trails Association, Student Conservation Association, Mount Rainier National Park Associates, Washington's National Park Fund, Discover Your Northwest, Washington Ski Touring Club, Japan Volunteers in Parks Association, Boy Scouts of America, Seattle Parks, Tacoma MetroParks, REI, Boeing, the Backcountry Horsemen, Nisqually and Pathfinder Schools, Evergreen State College, the list goes on and on and on. And of course special thanks must go to my partner this summer, Evan Escamilla from SCA, who as an intern was so instrumental in keeping everything on track and running smoothly.

An none of it would be possible, either, without the help of hundreds of other individual volunteers, too numerous to even begin to name here. Browse through the blog entries from this past year for a small sampling of all the people who actually did the work, building trails, curating photographs, assisting visitors, rebuilding rock walls, surveying amphibians, creating promotional videos, planting native plants and tending them in the greenhouse, again the list goes on and on and on.

These are the true Outdoors Giants of Mount Rainier, and I feel positively Llliputian in comparison. Thank you, everyone, for a great year!