By Hugh Saffel, WNPF Volunteer
When you visit Olympic National Park, you see license plates from all over the country. You likely hear accents that tell you this place has international appeal. For many, it’s a bucket list destination to experience the unique outdoor wonders of Olympic National Park.
It’s no surprise nearly three million visitors make their way to the park every year. Yet there are kids growing up in towns that neighbor the park who have never spent a day inside its borders.
Dean Butterworth is the Outreach and Education Specialist at Olympic National Park. It’s his job to work with area schools and organizations like the YMCA and the Girls and Boys Clubs to bring youth into the park. Over the years, there have been many programs that brought the classrooms to the park on field trips. This was all good, but Dean felt that more could be done to make the park part of those students’ lives.
He explained, “A lot of our programs were very short lived. Kids would be in the park for three hours. But I wanted them to have an opportunity to experience the park over and over again so that they could develop that really strong connection and love for Olympic National Park.”
Dean’s passion for this work is evident; he created the Adventures in Your Big Backyard program in partnership with the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula nearly a decade ago and has watched it grow, thanks in part to funding provided by Washington’s National Park Fund.
Through the program, kids in grades 4-6 from the Boys and Girls Clubs in Port Angeles and Sequim are immersed in many activities throughout the summer, led by Olympic National Park rangers. Each week offers a different adventure.
Some of these kids don’t know that Lake Crescent is a part of the national park, or they’ve never had an opportunity to go to Rialto Beach or the Hoh Rain Forest. If they don’t know about it, they can’t care about it. And if they can’t care about it, they won’t be the future park stewards and park lovers that we need so that the parks will be around in the future.”– Dean Butterworth, Outreach and Education Specialist at Olympic National Park
Adventures in Your Big Backyard offers kids hikes in each of the three ecosystems of the park. Tide pools are explored. Participants get to paddle across Lake Crescent in large 18-person Salish Canoes. They go kayaking. They even get to swim in the Sol Doc Resort Hot Springs. And throughout the experience, there is teaching and learning and an appreciation for the natural world.
It’s not an accident that this program is called Adventures in “Your” Big Backyard. The fact that these parks belong to everybody is a guiding philosophy of the work of Dean and the other park staff that help out with the program.
This philosophy underscores one of Washington’s National Park Fund’s four areas of focus: embracing inclusion. Many of the participants in this program live in circumstances that limit their recreational opportunities. Even though they live near the park, their access to it is limited. This program fills a real need for these under-served young people to have those experiences in Olympic National Park that will lead to a lifetime of land stewardship.
Dean Butterworth never imagined he’d be a park ranger. When growing up in Connecticut, the idea of being a park ranger wasn’t on Dean’s radar. But after serving in the Navy and then becoming a teacher, his experience thru hiking the Appalachian Trail changed his life. He realized that he really wanted to work outside. This eventually led him to the National Park Service, where his own experience has made him really excited to expose kids to opportunities that they didn’t know existed. Dean hopes that soon he will hire an intern or a seasonal employee who has been through the program. He’d love to see someone so moved by the experience that they want to go on to work for or with the National Park Service.
Everything from transportation costs to the costs to canoe at NatureBridge, kayak rentals with Adventures Through Kayaking, and compensation for the seasonal education technicians are provided for by Washington’s National Park Fund and its supporters.
Parks Project, a retailer of national parks and public-lands themed apparel, accessories, and home and outdoors goods, is one of those supporters. Their goal is to protect and preserve parklands for generations to come by educating, advocating, volunteering, and activating park supporters to get involved in conservation. And they live up to that goal by partnering with Washington’s National Park Fund, donating a portion of sales of their Olympic National Park apparel in support of the Adventures in Your Big Backyard project.
“My program couldn’t reach the number of kids it does without Washington’s National Park Fund. They support our Big Backyard program, but they’ve also helped with fish work on the Elwha and supported our marmot monitoring project. They are essential to our mission,” Dean shared. “Our job is to get people into the park, then stand back and let the park work its magic. With the help of Washington’s National Park Fund, I’ve been able to hire more staff to help accomplish that.”
This program takes place over a few weeks in the summer, but the impact will always be part of them. Dean says, “I hope that once the kids are finished with this summer, they feel comfortable going to the national park. That they feel like they belong there and that it’s their park.”
It’s about education, and about having fun, too. “I hope that they get some skills on how to hike and how to canoe and kayak, and that they’ll have some ethics about leaving an area better than you found it, and how to appropriately visit a tidepool and interact with the creatures that are living there. And I just hope that they have a great time. That they look back on their summer – and when the teacher asks, ‘so what did you do this summer?’ – that they have something really fun and exciting to write about.”
We’re pretty sure this is going to happen. Every one of these kids that we talked to excitedly exclaimed, “I can’t wait until next summer!”
You can help continue this program and others that bring local youth into Washington’s national parks, by donating to Washington’s National Park Fund, the official philanthropic partner to Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks. With your help, we raise private support to preserve and protect Washington’s national parks, funding scientific research, youth and family experiences, and projects that will keep these parks strong and vital now and forever, for everyone.