| By Cathy: The temperature read 39 degrees as 15 members of the South Austin Inner Lights (SAIL) Pathfinders headed out to Bastrop State Park in the early morning hours of January 13, 2013. Two years before, members of the club had helped distribute food, water, clothes, and household items to hundreds of people displaced by the Labor Day fires that swept through Bastrop County. The project on this day would be much more fun, because the goal was to see how many pine trees we could plant to help reforest Bastrop State Park. Once there, each team of 2 or 3 was given tools, a hard hat, a bag of baby pine trees, and a supply of pink flags to mark where the trees were planted. Everyone spread out along Park Road 1, and soon hundreds of pink flags could be seen along both sides of the road. Nearly 4 hours later, park rangers called a halt to the tree planting because the winds had come up and there was concern for the danger of falling trees. Many were disappointed that they couldn't keep going. The disappointment turned to cheers when it was announced that a record setting 1,913 trees had been planted. The SAIL Pathfinders are looking forward to returning to the park in the years to come and watching "their" trees grow. (Two of them are sure they will be able to tell which row they planted because it's crooked.) |   |
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