"Put the cut pieces
uphill. People walking down paths tend to look downhill," says the sage
leader of more than approximately 75 Wilderness Volunteers service
projects.
While we are brushing trail in the middle of a wilderness area,
Bill Sheppard makes it clear that we need to make sure it looks
as natural as possible. That means carefully hiding our slash piles up
the hill from the trail, not below the trail. Not in the line of sight
of hikers and horse riders. Keep it as natural
as possible.
Bill is meticulous about his placement of slash. Always uphill, always hidden from view.
And, he is someone whose advice should be followed.
Bill has led an
impressive 110 or so service trips between WV and the Sierra Club since
1990 after having been a participant for six years. And then, in 1989 he
was invited to the Sierra Club Midwest Subcommittee
spring meeting, and was assigned to lead a second section of a full
trip in late summer. It was a canoe service trip in the Sylvania
Wilderness, located in the Superior National Forest in Michigan.
In all his years
traveling around the country and lending a hand to various national
parks, forests and wilderness areas, Bill has seen a myriad of our
public lands. However, Bill, who lives in Flagstaff,
Arizona, finds himself returning to his local favorite, Grand Canyon
National Park. He also prefers leading trips that are within a day to a
day-and-a-half drive from Flagstaff. Most of his most recent trips have
been located in California, Arizona and New
Mexico.
He has conducted
nearly every type of trip imaginable, from building trails to
eradicating invasive species, and most of them have been in the back
country, where WV sometimes receives assistance from packers
and their mules hauling in gear from the trailhead to the camp site. It
lessens the weight on the packs for everyone, which makes an 11-mile
hike into a site much more manageable.
“The packers always
amaze me,” Sheppard stated. “They’re usually volunteers, and they really
know how to load their stock with our food, kitchen equipment and
tools. They make our work possible, and I’m always
grateful for their service.”
It’s not only our
national public lands that are on the receiving end of Bill’s selfless
service. He volunteers for the City of Flagstaff one day a week, working
a seven-hour shift doing graffiti abatement.
And, he also conducts “unofficial litter pick-up hikes on trails in the
forest near home several days a week,” which should come to no surprise
to anyone who has ever crossed paths with Bill.
On his various
service trips, Bill has enjoyed meeting and working with the volunteers
who hail from across the country and sometimes from overseas. He says,
“almost all the volunteers have been wonderful.
They’re motivated, flexible, physically fit and good comrades.
“The hardest part of
each trip was at the end of the week,” he added. “Saying goodbye to all
my hard-working friends who had generously spent a week of their
vacation time giving back to the wilderness. We
always hope to keep in touch and maybe meet up again on another WV
project.”
As for the details
that go into getting ready to lead a trip, many leaders, especially new
leaders, feel that putting together a menu is one of the most stressful
parts of the trip planning. If people aren’t
happy with the food, they might not have enough energy needed for the
work to be done.
Bill is not one of those leaders.
After planning as
many menus as he has, Bill has perfected the process. It is generally the
same from trip to trip, although he still tweaks his lineup – adding one
or two meals to change things up. For example, when leading his final Wilderness Volunteers trip in 2017, his menu featured a
new dinner. He served up Thai food, which featured Tom Ka soup,
Backpacker Pantry Pad Thai plus shrimp and spiked mandarins for dessert.
As he retires from leading service projects for Wilderness Volunteers, Bill has one last piece of advice.
“Be flexible, because our plans must sometimes change due to weather, wildfires, packer problems, etc.”
After all, there always is work to be done somewhere.
