Denver CI - Community Impact

Our first CI, community impact, was constructed of forest restoration. In 2002 Colorado experienced the worst fire in their history, the Hayman fire, which destroyed 7.2 million acres of forest and costed $1 billion to fight. We were working on land a man owned who was working with forest restoration people to help repair all the damage. As you can see in all the pictures the plant life that did exist is still all destroyed. We worked on clearing out the hillside of all the chared trees by halling them into the 'ditches' in the hillside. By doing so, it slowed down the erosion of the top soil so that new plants could grow. We also planted over 100 new trees in the little bit of shade that old tree stumps provided. It was hard work digging holes in the hard, rocky soil, carrying the small trees up and down the hills between the many ditches and moving all the chared wood. My ankle was sure loving all the action it was getting...j/k. Other people worked on weeding an area that was invaded by a very spreadable plant and planting grass in a different area. We worked for about 4 hours and inbetween all the work we took a break to eat lunch. As you can see we all ate beside the bus because that was the only shade possible and it was a very hot day, especially in jeans and a hard hat. After we were done we had about a 2 hour bus ride back to Denver and as you can see I quickly passed out and many people didn't have a problem documenting that. Actually, the majority of the people on the bus passed out. It was a great experience giving back to the environment but it was frustrating looking at all the acres of forest that were still destroyed.