There is something magical about the outdoors that connects us, that brings us together in a cathedral of flora and fauna that transcends molecules of dirt, plant, muscle and mind.
My climbing partner met his future wife on a trail; today they share a sweet little girl named Charlize. Perhaps you’ve had a similar experience.
But this story is an especially circuitous one. It’s about a trail runner – me – a barefoot runner and a retired elementary school teacher turned naturalist named Chuck Wright.
Wright is a man of patience and wisdom, and you wouldn’t be meeting him here if it weren’t for those diverging and reconnecting streams that occur in the natural world.
The weirdest part of this story is that Wright and I shared the same trail more than a hundred times – me running to heal after a series of tough times, Wright working to return the land to its natural state while healing after a difficult diagnosis.
Yet we never met on that trail. We met because of poetry.
The road less traveled
It is 2012 and Thea Gavin, a professor at Concordia University Irvine, charges down a rocky trail in the Laguna Coast Wilderness. She glides along without shoes, running on nothing but the calloused pads of her feet.
Tough as nails, Gavin has many sides. One is that she writes poetry. Another is that she loves to share her passions.
Three years later, Gavin sends me an email suggesting a column about a volunteer for the Laguna Coast Foundation. His name is Chuck Wright and although he shies away from the limelight, he, too, writes poetry.
Gavin’s email rolls along on my calendar for nearly two years until it finally feels it’s the right time for a column about poetry. With some coaxing, Gavin convinces her quiet friend to talk.
I make my way past a small fountain and tall plants lining the concrete path to Wright’s home. The door opens to a lean man with spectacles, Teva sandals, blue jeans, a Laguna Coast T-shirt, a bushy gray beard and a long dark ponytail.
His backyard looks something like an English garden, wild yet ordered. His eyes dance with delight as he describes his neighbor’s yard, filled with herbs from India. On this day, a hint of saffron wafts through the air.
We settle into Wright’s family room, where the walls are covered with dozens of plein-air paintings, many of them of the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park. A book of Wright’s poems sits on the table. But we have miles to go before poetry.
Over a stiff cup of Italian coffee, Wright shares that he grew up in Santa Ana and graduated from high school while becoming an Eagle Scout. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at UCI. For a time, he considered becoming a forest ranger. But he settled on a life as a teacher.
As the afternoon passes, I come to discover that Wright, 72, is a lifelong learner as much as he is a lifelong teacher.
For a few years, Wright taught fifth- and sixth-graders. But eventually he gravitated toward teaching kindergarten and first grade. For a time, some educators wondered about a man teaching in the lower grades. Then they realized many kids lived in single-parent homes and needed a father figure.
“I’m a big believer that you create the environment,” Wright says of his approach to teaching. “‘Nourishing’ is my favorite word.”
A journey begins with a single stoop
As he navigated the vagaries of the “leave no child behind” teaching movement, Wright learned to leave stress behind by cycling. After work, he hopped on his road bike and pedaled for 30 miles, or he jumped on his mountain bike and roamed the hills of El Moro Canyon, north of Laguna Beach.
“El Moro was my home away from home,” Wright recalls. “I loved the hills; I loved the challenge; I loved the coyotes.”
But on doctor’s orders, his cycling days ended when Wright was in his late 50s. With shattered bones and other maladies, his body had been pummeled enough.
Instead of sitting on the sidelines, Wright invited one of his two adult sons (the other lives in Florida) to join him on weekend hikes. Soon, father and son fell in love with the hills around Nix Nature Center on Laguna Canyon Road.
A keen observer, Wright grew troubled over the parking lot for what also is headquarters for Laguna Coast Wilderness Park. Mixed in with gravel, he found a surprising number of pieces of wire and nails, not good for car or mountain bike.
Being the Eagle Scout that he is, Wright started picking up the debris. Senior Park Ranger Barbara Norton noticed. Her first words to Wright: “Thank you so much.”
Soon, Norton suggested Wright serve as a volunteer. He demurred.
“I’m not a big joiner,” Wright quietly says. “I prefer to go under the radar, not to toot my own horn.”
Still, Norton won over Wright. That was nearly a decade ago. Today, Wright calls the park his new home away from home – especially the area around an old fire road called Edison Trail.
The wide trail meanders along the southeast side of Barbara’s Lake, Orange County’s only natural lake.
With flocks of snowy egrets in spring and fall, Edison Trail also happened to be my home away from home, my sanctuary.
By coincidence, my father’s favorite view from his condo looks west onto Edison Trail. The sunsets light up his life.
Promises to keep
Wright and the other volunteers sweat to restore the park to its native state. They don’t lack for work.
The county park covers 7,000 acres of rugged hills, steep canyons and near-vertical cliffs.
Volunteers like Wright remove invasive plant species such as fennel, pampas grass, castor bean, fountain grass, horehound, Sahara mustard, tecolote.
They replant with native species that include sage, buckwheat, laurel sumac and lemonade berry, as well as coastal sage.
Their mission just along Edison Trail is daunting. Taking in the vast canyon, the overall goal seems insurmountable.
“It’s difficult,” Wright admits, “but it’s not impossible. The trick is persistence.
“We’re stewards,” Wright explains. “We love the canyon, the birds, the plants. We feel like we’re making a difference.”
As we talk, the sun starts to slip toward the horizon and Wright agrees to read one of his poems.
“As I child/ I was surrounded/ by patchwork quilters/ mother/ sister/ grandma and aunts …
“I grew up with quilts/ today I wonder at the patchwork patterns of our landscape/ I ponder the seasons of color/ I relish the habitat of flora and fauna/ I hold the memory of this landscape/ I cherish it/ I nurture it/ grandma would understand it.”
Like the teacher who reads aloud, our backcountry binds us together – nature’s poetic justice.
Contact the writer: dwhiting@scng.com
