By Kelly Sanderbeck, Donor Engagement Manager
Sawyer: an occupational term referring to someone who saws wood, particularly using a pit saw either in a saw pit or with the log on trestles above ground or operates a sawmill. In Celtic the meaning of the name Sawyer is: Cuts timber.
“I’m stunned that someone as outdoor oriented as you doesn’t know about Washington’s National Park Fund!” So came Mason White’s introduction to WNPF just last year from a colleague on the Washington Trails Association (WTA) board. With his decades of volunteer trail work as well the highly-specialized skill of a crosscut saw certifier (more on that below), he was ‘onboard’ (sorry, I couldn’t resist…) to support the parks in whatever ways possible. He and his wife Pam have joined the Over the Top Society, attended the auction last spring, and is even offering up a unique experience for this year’s event: ‘What’s It Like to Scout a Trail?’ The outing will lead a few folks (in very good physical shape) out on a trail at the beginning of the season to document its condition and recommend maintenance for the year. No chain saws or other equipment in this venture, so participants should be prepared to do some climbing up and over, repeatedly!
“The auction was GREAT FUN as promised. I had no idea what to expect, but the presentations were highly professional, entertaining and educational at the same time. And all the flat hats in attendance were a special bonus.” He came poised to spend money on the unique outdoor experiences with park experts that he’d heard about. But his first-choice quest to swim with biologists in Olympic National Park, ‘Fish Fun! A Snorkel Survey of Elwha River Coho Salmon,’ lost to a higher bidder. “I’ll be first in line to bid on it again next year if it’s offered.” Still fired up with an overall goal to support the parks, though, he took that enthusiasm to the Fund-A-Need and raised his paddle for Adventures in Your Big Backyard and other youth-in-the-parks programs.
Mason is an avid and enthusiastic lover of the outdoors and translates that passion in conversation. “Wilderness needs a big constituency because by itself it cannot vote.” He came to the Northwest and our parks ‘well primed,’ in his words, growing up in the outdoors in a heavily-wooded area of Minnesota north of the Twin Cities. “It was great for cross-country skiing, some backpacking, and I spent my summers canoeing in Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness, Ontario and the Northwest Territory” The summer of 1995 found him in Seattle at a healthcare conference, with a waterside room at the Edgewater Inn. On a whim he decided to jump on a ferry one evening for a walk around Winslow on Bainbridge. “It would be so nice to live here! How would I pull that off?” Just a few years later, synchronistically, he was recruited to be part of the executive team for a software startup. So, he and his wife Pam headed out to settle and explore a different natural landscape here in Cascadia. (They met as students at Carleton College where their two daughters, both middle school Math teachers, graduated from as well). “I like winter and that’s something I do miss about Minnesota. Winter in Seattle is ‘voluntary,’ but that also means you can go to the snow 12 months of the year.”
The most fascinating thing to learn about Mason is that he is one of a handful of crosscut saw evaluators who train and certify others to use this specialized equipment when maintaining trails. None of us likes to see a tree taken down, but when they’re already down it’s mighty helpful not to have to scale over one of these giants! His foray into building the skill started in 2007 when he was a WTA volunteer crew leader and trail scout, venturing out as soon as melting started each season. His task was to come back with recommendations on how to repair and/or re-open trails that had often been neglected for years. After several years, WTA forwarded him on to the US Forest Service to be trained and certified as a C-Sawyer Evaluator. (Check out crosscut sawyers in action!)
He’s been a volunteer trip leader with WTA for 11 years now, provides the crosscut saw certification that is required on all public lands, and serves on the WTA board. This past summer, he led two multi-day work crews in Olympic National Park. You will not see anything like these old-time loggers in action when out with Mason. (The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits…) He’s all about attention to detail, care and following the rules. Trained well, he almost always goes into the mountains with other people. “It’s just safer that way.”
And, he admits he’s never bored, whether on or off trail. The more he talks to people, the more places he wants to go to: waterfalls, lakes, mountains. “Everyone should have a chance to see a glacier while we still have them. Geysers and canyons should not just be for postcards.” (Spouse Pam is very rarely a hiker and her goal is to never get her boots muddy!) A favorite memory is from Olympic National Park during the summer of 2015. He and a friend were at High Divide near Sol Duc Hot Springs. They spent the day watching goats, gazing at Mount Olympus from Bogachiel and all the lakes. A LONG day, but very satisfying. He also remembers taking his girls to the mountains and trying to keep them moving forward, but at a reasonable pace. They’d work on math facts like times tables and square roots and, not surprisingly, they ended up as hikers, backpackers AND Math teachers! Mason continues to reminisce, and an amazing story pops up about the longest hike he did in one day — 62 miles from Georgetown in Washington, D.C. to Harper’s Ferry, WV. Crazy, maybe, but incredibly memorable. He did end up with massive stress fractures in both ankles. “That’s what happens when you’re middle-aged…”
And now, even though his days are spent working for Conga in software product strategy, Mason daydreams on how to take people to places they haven’t been and show them things they didn’t even know they wanted to see. What to do to make the parks more available to more people? “It’s all about boots and packs, exposing a broader constituency of people who can ‘try on’ the wilderness. I know it’s a possibility and that people will benefit individually and societally from the experiences. I want them to understand how to do it, build their confidence and knowledge, and get out there with acceptable risk.”
How we go about it is key, though. WTA’s idea has been to start by recruiting community groups who lead their members on outings to the parks. Instead of the outside world telling them what they should do, we ask: ‘What works for you?’ The thought is that if people have these initial experiences with a known factor first, then they’re much more likely to stretch their comfort zone and go out on their own. And those experiences and adventures will then be normalized and available for themselves, children and grandchildren, and other people’s children… “How do we get people past the roads and paved trails, and get them capable and competent?”
“If I had $1,000,000 to spend on the parks right now, I’d get people from behind their windshields so they can enjoy the subtler aspects of the parks, as opposed to thundering crescendo moments.” And in 100 years he wants to see fully adequate protections for the parks, their viewsheds and watersheds, and land agencies such as the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management coordinating more so the parks don’t become isolated and exist in a silo.
“At some point, I hope parks get out of their ‘bake sale style’ of fundraising.” In other words, he fully hopes the current deferred maintenance backlog to be addressed by the federal government ($12 billion nationwide) so WNPF will fund just the extras – the research, the families in the parks, the volunteers. And to keep working to provide accessibility without loving the parks to death.
In the meantime, you’ll find Mason continuing to search out wildlife and the Northwest’s finest nooks, leaving no downed tree across a trail and generally NOT kicking back — but instead dreaming of getting just one more person out into the woods.