RMC Newsletter - Summer 2008

Doug Mayer, RMC Volunteer Extraordinaire
By Lydia Goetze

In early May, Doug was honored with the President's Call to Service Award for his "long-term commitment to maintain trails and facilities in the White Mountain National Forest". Only volunteers who have contributed more than 4000 hours of service are even eligible. (That's an average of at least 7 weeks a year every year for the last 15 years!) Sometimes it's too easy to take friends and neighbors for granted, and I thought this was a good opportunity to inform and remind ourselves of the time, energy and caring that Doug gives to the RMC.

1. When did you start volunteering with the RMC?

I started volunteering in the early 1990's, when I was living in Sandwich. Within a year or two, I had moved to Randolph, and it was hard not to get sucked into the RMC vortex. I was happily stenciling signs, then I was on the board, then someone tossed trails my way after, I guess, I accidentally started helping out too much!

2. When did you take over the Trails?

In 1993, I started supervising the trail crew. Laurie Archambault, working with others, had just started the very early efforts to bring a new level of skills and training to the RMC crew. I started by asking, "Where are the tools?" She said, "Oh, on my porch, stored in a garbage can. There's a chainsaw nearby." It was pretty disheartening.

3. How has the work of our trail crew changed over these 15 years?

When I started on the RMC board, Jeff Tirey was President. I remember him saying at an RMC annual meeting, "There's no reason for us to be biggest trail club, but there's also no reason why we can't be the best." I took that to heart. I thought that was exactly right. RMC has a trails history that's unrivaled, perhaps in the country. And a community that, as we've seen, will support it one-hundred percent. What was missing, I think, was someone to put the pieces together. That's all I did.

To get up to speed on the trails front took a decade. Over that time, we built up our cache of tools, we constructed a top-notch workshop, and we brought our crew size up to a number that allows us to do everything we need to do. That meant an investment in time and energy to hire, train and hold onto people.

I feel like I'm always hiring. When I see someone I think would be good for RMC, I try to plant the seed with him or her. I ask around a lot. I want RMC to have the best folks we can possibly get. That makes life easier for all of us volunteers, too! And, we've had great hard-working, incredibly skilled trail crews, and Field Supervisors who, I think, are some of the most reliable, experienced seasonal workers in the White Mountains, period -- maybe in New England.

4. What else have you done for the RMC? I think of starting and editing the Newsletter, the feasibility study and fundraising for Stearns Lodge, and I'm sure there are many other things.

Hmmm. Let's see. Co-author of the current edition of Randolph Paths (really a total rewrite!), got the prior edition of the RMC map together (the first digital edition), and other things I'm sure I'm forgetting...

5. Aren't you also involved in other volunteer efforts in the White Mountains?

I write regularly for the Appalachia Journal, which I enjoy. For ten years, my friend Rebecca Oreskes and I have been doing a series of oral histories, called Mountain Voices. That's been a very interesting and enjoyable project.

My main other volunteer effort is the Waterman Fund. Guy was, as you know, a really dear friend. He was a constant source of ideas, enthusiasm and encouragement. After his death, I joined others and helped start the Waterman Fund, which supports alpine stewardship efforts around New England. I'm pleased that RMC got the very first Waterman Fund grant, for an alpine display at Crag Camp. And we got funded last year for alpine trail work and an interpretive project on Lowe's Path. (There's an online slide show, on the RMC web site.) I was on the Waterman Fund board for seven years.

6. What about influence? It seems to me that one of the most important things you do is influence the young people with whom you work -- partly about good trails and how to build them, but also about work ethics, ways of solving personal and physical problems, and thinking about the directions their lives might take. You are working as a teacher and a master (to your apprentices in trail work -- an experience few young people get to have nowadays). Any thoughts about this?

When I first started as Trails Chair, I was very concerned about productivity. I measured every season in numbers of steps, scree stabilized and feet of drainages built. I'm less concerned about quantity now, and more concerned about process. What excites me now is the ability to instill a sense of stewardship among the trail crew. The bottom line is, the work will always get done, and we'll make certain it gets done to a very high level of quality. Some years we get more work done than other years. We always get the basic maintenance done and we make a dent in the erosion control work.

But to be able to instill a sense of ethics about the backcountry among the trail crew -- that's invaluable. Those folks will go on to share those ideas with hundreds if not thousands of others in their lives, and they'll tie it to other aspects of their world. That's a hugely interesting topic to me. A rock staircase is great and important, but understanding why we're doing this work, why it matters, and how it connects to everything around us, that's worth a lot more. That's what Guy and Laura Waterman taught me.

It's a relationship, and like any relationship, it's a two-way street. I've learned so much from the trail crew members over the years. They challenge my long-held assumptions, and bring new perspectives to the process. I'm constantly impressed by them. I would never have lasted this long in this position, if it weren't for the comraderie and great attitudes of all these folks. They literally give me energy. The association is definitely mutually beneficial.

7. What do you get out of this?

The friendships with members of the trail crew and the Field Supervisors will last my lifetime. We have so many great, funny stories! We've shared some crazy, productive, amazing times together. And what could be better than great times in the mountains, being productive as stewards of a landscape you care about?

I'm also probably one of the biggest users of RMC's trails, so this isn't all disinterested benevolence on my part. I use the trails almost every day-- hiking, trail running, backcountry skiing. I have a quote above my desk from E.B. White that probably sums it all up: "I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."