As is the case, if you are not with a large group of volunteers with a banner or national cause, you get shuffled off to the side by the FS. How long do "we" who do the majority of the work on the trails in our district have to set back and watch those who do a miminal amount of work take all the credit.

Loving the Clackamas District trails has always required much individual initiative and dedication. Agencies and staff come and go.

One needs to muster as much internal satisfaction and appreciation from within because little comes from the outside.

D.

Often when a large bureaucracy is involved, the spirit of those on the ground gets lost in the shuffle.  An abrupt change in management left us trail guys in a lurch.  I put in a lot of hours, but I probably put in more on abandoned trails...but in either case, I have not heard from the Forest Service in Estacada since Jacquelyn left.  We are in limbo.  She was our voice and we were cut off abruptly.

If they want us to have first aid certification, and since we are working our asses off (for free, and paying for our own gas!), then they should pay for the training to satisfy their requirement.  And of course have saw certification available.

 I've always done trail work for my own satisfaction, and like others, to preserve our linear museums of a lost time, snaking through forests that have stayed the same.  

I guess we all want to be democratic in the process of determining our wild lands.  I think of the Forest Service full of Model Ts and fire lookouts, but we live in a different era.  It's strange because, except for the roads and logging, nothing has really changed in the woods themselves, more or less...but our society has changed a great deal.  I signed up to be official about it, but I often wonder if it makes any difference.  Does anyone read those "trail reports"?  Who cares anyway?  I think government should always be "society in action" and not ruled by kings, no matter what their form or title.  With humans, it's never quite clear.  

Thanks to the internet, Trailadvocates has a voice.  Sooner or later someone's gonna wonder what happened to those "trail guys" crazy enough to carry crosscuts around, dodging trash and bullets.  Either that or we just carry on with bizness.  

Thanks guys, I was just venting. You can't keep that stuff inside too long before it wrecks havoc on your body. I don't care about being padded on the back stuff, I just want them to let me know when I need to take the saw class to be certified. How hard can that be? Evidently it must be rocket science.

I guess I will just do what I like the best, grab a roll of flagging and my gensu saw and head up into the mountains and look for more of the abandoned trails we seem to have so many of in our district.

Don