Every Muddy Day Is Worth It

This season at Friends of Trees, we will plant our millionth tree. Our millionth tree, like all of the trees and native shrubs we’ve planted, will be planted with the power of community volunteers. We’re telling their stories! Read more here.

Carolyn’s commitment to crew leading is inspired by a sense of community and fun

Carolyn is the type of Crew Leader who brings cookies to planting events on her own birthday. She has a keen sense of the big difference that small actions can make, and even more simply, believes in the importance of fun.

“It’s so much fun,” she says of crew leading. “Why would I want to do anything else?”

She learned about Friends of Trees in 2019, quickly became a Crew Leader and volunteers as often as she can, racking up almost 400 volunteer hours at dozens of events in the years since.

“It’s too easy to become isolated in this world,” she says. “I volunteer every weekend if I can. It’s the best way to stay active.”

Carolyn is an avid volunteer, and not just at Friends of Trees. “There are so many ways to be involved,” she says. “It’s what a community needs.”

With Friends of Trees, Carolyn especially loves leading crews at Green Space plantings, helping lead volunteers to enhance natural areas in urban parks by planting native trees and shrubs. She loves seeing the plants grow from year to year. And because she is so active, she gets to meet people, then remeet people.

“You start each event with: we don’t even know each other, but we are a community,” she says. “And it’s so exciting when you see people come back for another event. It makes me want to weep! There’s so much bad news out in the world, but then you see so many people who want to plant.”

She knows it’s her job to set the tone for how the planting is going to go, especially on a chilly, wet winter day. She knows the planting sites well and she’ll often point out established plants from a previous year and tell volunteers, people just like you planted that.

“You know that anyone who is a part of a Friends of Trees event cares about trees. And people want to help. Whether it’s muddy or hard to dig, people just want to help. They love doing it.”

“Carolyn has such a calming, supportive presence,” says Jenny, the Volunteer & Outreach Program Manager at Friends of Trees. “She gives confidence to everyone she works with.”

Carolyn remembers walking to a planting event at Gateway Green with a huge group of college students on a service trip.

“They were just thrilled to be able to do this. And they’re not even from here.”

Carolyn believes that Friends of Trees Crew Leaders have a couple things in common: enthusiasm and perseverance. Carolyn certainly has these qualities in spades. Even though she has recently been sidelined from crew leading as she recovers from a surgery, she has found other ways to volunteer her time toward event prep. And she’s eager to put the vest back on and lead crews again as soon as she can.

When asked what she would say to someone considering becoming a Crew Leader, she had a simple response: “Do it. It is just so fun.”

After a planting event, she goes home, washes her muddy clothes, and enjoys the satisfaction of what she and her crew accomplished. She sees it as her role as a Crew Leader to make sure her crew feels that same satisfaction, that they’ll later feel the pull to revisit what they planted to see how it’s grown.

Carolyn sees the long term impact, the growth of both trees and community, and she knows it all starts with people simply showing up.

“Just the fact that people come,” she says, “makes every muddy day worth it.”

A Million Trees, A Million Stories is brought to you by our Presenting Partner, Portland General Electric.