No organization magically springs, full-blown, into the world. Much planning, experimenting, trial and error, and gathering of information is involved. But before any of that happens, one person has to have an idea, an inspiration, which is so compelling that it must be pursued. In the case of the Poudre Wilderness Volunteers, that person is Chuck Bell. While volunteering for the Forest Service, he saw a vital need for ordinary citizens to assist the Forest Service in maintaining the wilderness.

Here, in Chuck Bell’s own words, is the story of how we started.

I started volunteering for the Redfeather Lakes Ranger District in the summer of 1993, shortly after I retired from the U.S. Foreign Service and moved to Colorado. I was designated a volunteer ranger and assigned to patrol with USFS seasonal rangers. I did this for the summers of 1993 and 1994. During this period, both the Redfeather and Estes-Poudre Ranger Districts had substantial budgets, which were even augmented by a special grant. There were some 30 seasonal employees and three full-time USFS staff members working on wilderness and trails. The old bunk house at Stubb Creek was full, and some staff stayed in the old trailers parked there. We had money to rent a team of llamas for the summer, which we used to help us do trail work.

By the summer of 1995, the special grant had expired, the budgets for the two ranger districts had been slashed dramatically, and they were in the process of being combined into one ranger district as a cost-saving measure. I was hired that summer as one of only two seasonal employees (down from 30 in just two years!) and was sent to Gunnison for Level Two law enforcement training so I could write tickets and carry out the full functions of a seasonal ranger. I patrolled four days a week, working mostly in the Rawah Wilderness.

By August of that summer, I was very much aware of the difficulties besetting our local USFS offices. There was great uncertainty among the staff about the cuts that were being made as the two districts were combined, and morale was low. It was clear to me, based partly on my own career in the federal government, that there would be no significant turn-around in USFS budgets any time soon.

As I patrolled the Rawah, doing the best I could as a “lone” ranger to keep the trails clear and deal with large numbers of visitors around the many lakes, I reflected often on the USFS budget and staffing problems. I had come to love this wilderness. I was deeply concerned that with the budget cuts, it could not be properly cared for, especially as the number of wilderness visitors increased.

One day I hiked up the West Branch Trail, dropped my gear at a small, hidden campsite near the intersection with the Blue Lake Trail, then continued on to Island and Carey Lakes. I climbed over the top of the ridge north of Carey, dropped down to Twin Crater Lakes, then took the Rawah South Trail back to the West Branch, and back up to my campsite. During this energetic circuit, I met 113 wilderness visitors. As I lay in my tent that night, reflecting on the day and the dilemma of the USFS budget cuts, it became clear to me that the only realistic chance for managing this beautiful wilderness, and the other wonderful areas in our region, would be to establish a fairly large corps of trained volunteers.

The following week I headed into Fort Collins and discussed my idea with Karen Roth, my immediate supervisor in the Redfeather Ranger District, and with Estes-Poudre District Ranger, Mike Lloyd. Both gave me encouragement to see what I could do in getting something organized. However, as I talked to more people in the USFS office, it became clear I needed to tread carefully in building a volunteer ranger program. While people at the top were supportive, as were those dealing directly with the wilderness, I sensed hostility among other staff at the idea of a significant volunteer program, partly, I surmised, because it was seen as a threat to jobs, and partly because it was viewed as something else they would be forced to manage with their rapidly diminishing resources. A volunteer program like the one I envisaged would be quite a departure from the then-current USFS thinking. Accordingly, I realized any program undertaken would need to be largely self-administering, to minimize the amount of work imposed on USFS staff, and it had to be carefully in line with USFS policies and practices.

My next step was to approach my friend Art Bunn and enlist his help in founding the organization. Art readily agreed. After considerable discussion, and support and counsel from District Ranger Mike Lloyd, we decided we should “go the full route” and found our own non-profit group to provide volunteer rangers to the USFS. One of our first tasks would have to be recruiting a founding board of directors. We discussed several possibilities. Art had much better contacts in the community than I, and agreed to take on this task. I had a scheduled October trip to southern Africa for my bird-watching tour business. While I was gone, Art recruited the core of our first board.

At the beginning of December, we had a very good idea of what kind of organization we wanted. We arranged to visit the Indian Peaks Wilderness Alliance in Boulder, along with Mike Lloyd, Ron Strobel, and Martha Moran, who had replaced Karen Roth as manager of wilderness and trails. We first went to a joint meeting between officials of the Boulder Ranger District and the Alliance, then afterward went to an Alliance board meeting. From this visit, we decided if we were to work hand-in-hand with USFS staff, we had to make it very clear our organization would not engage in any environmental advocacy or try to tell the Forest Service what to do. Instead, we would engage only in supporting the mission and goals of our USFS ranger district. We also saw a need to structure our organization in such a way that we had regular turnover of leadership.

We had our first organizational board meeting in mid-December, 1995, and we met again in early January 1996. In December, we settled on the basics of our mission:  To help our ranger district manage and protect its wilderness and backcountry areas by recruiting, training, equipping and fielding volunteers to help educate forest visitors and serve as the eyes and ears of the USFS while on the trail. At the January meeting we kicked around a lot of ideas for our name and settled on Poudre Wilderness Volunteers.

As these basics took shape, I worked with our pro bono attorney Dave Williams (now a judge) to draft our Articles of Incorporation and our bylaws. In January, we approved the bylaws. I filed the Articles of Incorporation, then applied to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service for our tax-exempt status.

The board began its discussions of what kind of volunteers we wanted, and planning for our selection process, training and scheduling. The question of what kind of volunteers to recruit produced our first really lively debate. Some board members favored a small, highly dedicated, very well trained corps of physically fit young people ready to spend most of their summer on the trails. Others said we couldn’t recruit such a corps, as young people need to work for pay and couldn’t be expected to have the kind of time this would require to be a PWV volunteer. We settled on recruiting citizens like ourselves, of all ages, backgrounds and abilities, with the main criterion being a love for being out on the trail. We would then train them as much as we could. I thought up the phrase “Hike with a Purpose” to use in our recruiting publicity, an idea that from today’s perspective has served us very well.

Board member Kent Clements of the Wilderness Education Association agreed to put together our first training program. It would use the “Authority of the Resource” technique, developed by board member George Wallace, when contacting backcountry users. And it would train our volunteers how to teach “Leave No Trace” principles.

We had another lively discussion about whether we would have any volunteers on horseback. Board members George Wallace and Chuck Peterson were very persuasive in advocating a horse patrol. The board agreed.

With the name chosen, I visited local graphic designer Jeff Maust and asked if he would be willing to donate a design for our logo. Within a few days, he had produced a very attractive, meaningful logo. It was enthusiastically approved by the board.

In the meantime, Art and Mike Lloyd approached one of their neighbors, Will D’Arduino, who dealt with community support at Hewlett-Packard, for financial assistance. HP gave us a grant of $2,000 to help us get started.

In February, Art and I met with Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland Supervisor Skip Underwood, who was well apprised of our efforts and gave his full support. He agreed to host a news conference to formally launch our new organization. I set about contacting the media.

The news conference took place in early March, and was attended by all the area’s newspapers, two of the three TV channels from Denver, and some local weeklies and monthlies. The media coverage was excellent, and our volunteer phone line began to ring. We had 80 persons call to volunteer. We then had to put together an interview process to screen prospective volunteers and make sure they were suited to the kind of public contact we envisaged for our new organization.

Poudre Wilderness Volunteers was off and running.