Outdoor volunteers to congregate in Marble for fun and project work

Volunteers will gather in Marble for a weekend of stewardship projects, camping, and barbecue June 24 and 25, hosted by Roaring Fork Outdoor Volunteers.

The Marble Stewardship Extravaganza will deliver some extra attention on the trails and restoration projects in the Roaring Fork Valley playground, according to Program Director Melissa Daniels.

“Marble is such a special place,” Daniels said. “It’s beautiful, and it has a really unique entity, and it feels really rewarding to bring people there to help us take care of it and help the folks in Marble take care of those places.”

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Attendees will partake in trail work and ecological restoration at Raspberry Ridge, Marble Wetlands, and the Marble Mill Site. There will also be non-restoration activities including a historic tour of the Mill Site and surrounding areas by Marble resident Alex Menard, wildflower and waterfall hikes, and dinner donated by local restaurant Slow Groovin’. Volunteers are invited to spend one or both nights camping with RFOV at Marble’s in-town campsite or to drop by for any of the activities throughout the weekend.

“Our volunteer stewardship projects, they always feel special to me to watch people bond over our shared love of the outdoors,” Daniels said. “To be able to do that in a context where we also get to eat dinner together and make breakfast together and camp out together, it gives a really unique insight into the beautiful community that exists in our valley.”

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While Marble is a popular spot for Aspen recreators to visit, the traffic to the area does not match the level of attention to restoration that the town’s natural sites receive. Daniels said that RFOV’s events in Marble attract lower attendance than other project sites, despite the relatively similar distance from most volunteers.

“We really want to bring attention to the fact that these places in Marble are really not that far from us,” Daniels said. “When we go play up there, we have a responsibility to make sure that we’re mitigating the impacts that we have on those trails and natural areas.”

Unlike Aspen, the town of Marble does not have sufficient funding to care for their natural spaces, according to Daniels. Traffic to Marble continues to grow, particularly to the well-known Mill Site, at a rate that is unsustainable for the land without increased restoration efforts. Daniels said the town of Marble asked RFOV to assist with caring for the Mill Site in particular, since it is one of the most “well-traveled and well-loved” sites in Marble.

“We feel a sense of responsibility to support the people in Marble in caring for those places,” she said. “The people that live in Marble, they are intensely passionate about taking care of those natural spaces, and they are doing it year-round, and so we are just really excited to be able to support them in those efforts.”

In addition to the challenge Marble faces from increased visitation, the Crystal River, which runs through Marble, has faced ecological threats in recent years. The Crystal River is one of the last free-flowing rivers in the West, according to Wilderness Workshop Campaign Manager Michael Gorman, making it a prime target for a new dam as water supplies in the West dwindle.

Local advocacy groups, including Wilderness Workshop, formed the Crystal River Wild and Scenic Coalition with the goal of attaining protections for the river. The group seeks to do so by designating the river as a Wild and Scenic River, which provides federal protection against damming.

Wilderness Workshop is collaborating on the Extravaganza to educate volunteers on advocacy issues regarding the Crystal River. To support the coalition’s efforts to protect the river, Gorman said volunteers can sign a petition in support of Wild and Scenic designation.

“That can be a really strong way to protect the Crystal as it is and keep it in its free flowing state,” he said. “As water becomes more and more scarce and valuable in the West, there’s always that threat of people looking for that last bit of water to develop …. (It’s) a proactive attempt, rather than waiting until there’s an active threat.”

The combination of Wilderness Workshop’s advocacy education with RFOV’s stewardship approach can give volunteers a more complete understanding of land-related issues.

“It gives folks a lot of tools and ways to engage with the environment around them — both hands on and to provide some productive protections,” Wilderness Workshop Field Coordinator Sam Feuerborn said.

Tending to the land can also help volunteers cultivate a deeper relationship to it by creating a heightened sense of responsibility for the area, according to Daniels. “Performing stewardship makes you feel a greater sense of ownership and then makes people want to continue to take care of those places, and then also other natural spaces as well.”

She referred to a study conducted by researchers at Cornell University showing that forming a personal connection to the land leads to a sense of psychological ownership, which in turn results in a higher likelihood of taking better care of the land.

“When we get out there and we care for these places that we care about, it makes us feel this sense of collective responsibility to continue that into the future,” she said.