Community-Minded
- Clay Groetsch
- 15 minutes ago
- 2 min read
BY Clay Groetsch
Before my GrizzlyCorps term, I spent half a year hiking the Appalachian Trail, a place where community was a given as long as you went by a “trail name” and smelled strongly of sweat and grime. All along the trail, connecting with people was as easy as making new friends on the first day of kindergarten; people went out of their way to share with you, and it was easy to share with them in return. A stranger coming into your camp in the dark of night wasn’t something to be afraid of, but an opportunity to make a new friend.
We hitched rides to town, were given free food, and were easily accepted no matter where we traveled along the trail. But as my partner and I unloaded our belongings into our new apartment (With a permanent roof and a permanent bed), I began to feel nervous. Here I was, an outsider in a small town, after months being part of a community so expansive that it stretches from Georgia to Maine.
I had lived in small towns before, and I knew how hard it was to become part of the community, and I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to handle the long process.
Luckily for me, my position at the Trinity County RCD came with a significant perk: it was well integrated with the local community. With the large number of people employed at the RCD and the RCD's commitment to working with partners around the county (including agencies and non-profits), I suddenly had tons of connections around the county. For the first month, every day I felt like I met someone new, something I had not felt the last time I lived in a small town.
I got to see firsthand people come together for community fundraisers, unofficial parades, and county-wide events.
This community-focused attitude was most exemplified, to me, by the community's participation in prescribed burning. While some of us at these burns were paid to be there, others volunteered their free time to hard (and hot) manual labor, all in the hopes of making their community safer from wildfire. As a friend living in the community once told me, you don’t come to Trinity County to get rich and take it easy, you do it because you love being here.
The greatest lesson I learned from being on the trail was how to get to know strangers, and you do that by looking for your commonalities.
I may have grown up across the country, but like everyone else I meet here, I love my community and want to see it thrive. What calmed my fears in the end was that even as an outsider, I could still connect with people by being community-minded.
