Master Naturalist calls organization ‘fulfilling’
Master Naturalist calls organization ‘fulfilling’
Phil Wanzer often ends his emails with “Happy Trails,” and he means it. The 59-year-old Russellville man is president of the River Valley Arkansas Master Naturalists, and he is passionate about the outdoors and keeping park trails clean.
“Our primary focus is the state parks — Petit Jean, Mount Nebo, Mount Magazine and Lake Dardanelle,” he said. “Last year, Mount Magazine had a bad ice storm, and the campgrounds and trail were closed. It was great, because there was yellow tape saying, ‘Do Not Enter,’ and we’d go under. Hey, we’re special,” he said, laughing. “We’d just clear it of broken limbs, … just broken stuff.”
Members of the group weren’t using power tools, just handsaws and loppers, he said, and picking up trash as they came across it.
“We really have fun while we’re doing this,” he said.
Wanzer, who started his Master Naturalist’s journey while at a park cleanup, said there is a big difference in doing trail maintenance and taking a hike.
“When you hike, you have a destination, so the whole group is beelining for this destination, which is cool. With us, we stop every couple of minutes. Not all the time is everybody working. … It gives you time to stop and look around and discover things you might not have seen. It just makes it a fulfilling experience.”
He grew up in Hyde Park, New York, a shy boy and the youngest of four children.
“That’s the thing about what we do. If you stop and think about it, the enchantment and wonderment all around you are right there.”
Phil Wanzer
TALKING ABOUT THE RIVER VALLEY ARKANSAS
MASTER NATURALISTS’ ACTIVITIES
“I always tell people my first friends were the trees and the rocks and the dirt, because we lived way out in the country, and that’s all I knew for the early years was running around, back then, as long as I was home for dinner. … It was a great childhood,” he said.
His father worked for Western Publishing for about 40 years, he said, a company that produced Betty Crocker cookbooks, Dell paperbacks and comic books. Wanzer’s mother died when he was 12.
“I always had tons of books. I still have tons of books,” he said.
His first job out of high school was at the publishing company, but he said he didn’t want to stay in the area, so he and his girlfriend at the time packed up their things and moved to Houston, Texas, where the oil boom was going strong. He found a construction job, but it was too unstable, he said, so he went to an employment agency and got hired almost immediately at a machine shop making oil-field equipment.
“We made tools that went down in the oil wells for geologists. It would send back readings telling them what’s down there. There was a lot of precision stuff. I had to basically teach myself trigonometry,” he said.
It turned out that he was good at being a machinist, and he thinks maybe it’s in his DNA.
“My father always had tools down in the basement — laves and drill presses. If I look at my ancestors, … there’s actually a Wanzer sewing machine. Then there were the little bicycle manufacturers,” he said.
Wanzer worked at the Houston machine shop for 10 years, but that chapter of his life came to a sudden halt.
“Houston fell apart. In ’86, the price of oil was down to $10 a barrel,” he said. He moved to Tampa, Florida, which he called “a playground.” He worked in a machine shop and swam with dolphins in his free time. From there, he moved to Hot Springs where, once again, he easily found another job as a machinist.
Wanzer ended up in Russellville because of a “great opportunity” that didn’t pan out. He was hired as the machine-shop supervisor at a new startup company, which after spending “millions of dollars” never got off the ground, he said. Wanzer worked for several years at two more machine shops, then found his present job at a small machine shop, Precision Tool & Machine in Dardanelle, where he’s been for about four years.
“We’re the best machine shop for miles away,” he said.
Wanzer said although he enjoys his job, what keeps him going is planning outdoor adventures as a Master Naturalist.
He said he always participated in park cleanups, even when he lived in Florida, and he was at Lake Dardanelle participating in a National Public Lands Day when he heard about the Master Naturalist program.
“Th e y were giving out awards to people for weirdest trash, most trash. … I was kind of getting bored, and I just turned to leave,” Wanzer said. “The woman making presentations said, ‘I really want to thank the Master Naturalists for all they did.’ That caught my ear, so I turned around.”
Wanzer said he saw about a half-dozen people wearing white shirts with “Master Naturalists” on the front and asked a man named Bobby about the group.
“It just seemed like such a great organization, what they do and stuff,” he said.
Wanzer quickly became a Naturalist in Training, or NIT, he said, noting the unfortunate acronym that’s also the egg of a louse.
“I was still a NIT, still three quarters of the way through the training, and I got an email saying at the next meeting, I was going to be named president of the River Valley Arkansas Master Naturalists,” he said. Wanzer became president four years ago, about the same time he graduated as a Master Naturalist. “There was really nobody else who would do it. Being gung-ho helps,” he said.
It takes 40 hours of training to become a Master Naturalist, he said. Classes start in January, and they are held mornings and afternoons on Saturdays. Wanzer said he needs 15 people to form a class this year.
“These classes are just unbelievable,” he said, adding that they are taught by professors and experts in their fields. “Even if you think you don’t want to learn about birds or fish, when you go to these classes, it gives you new insight into things you never knew about.”
Wanzer said there are about 18 “paid-up” active members in the organization, ranging in age from their 40s to 80.
“I fear that our group could just disappear if we don’t get some new people in the mix,” he said.
His goal for 2015 is “to keep our little group going,” he said. “Our little group has done some amazing things, I think. As far as the group, fellowship is a big part of the whole thing. One thing they say, if you’re a church person, you may live longer — well, it has to do with fellowship and socializing. In our group, fellowship is great because you’re with like-minded people.”
He said some of the River Valley Arkansas Master Naturalists are on the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission-sponsored Stream Team, and four times a year, they go to the Illinois Bayou, north of Dover, to try to catch invertebrates.
“I’m standing in the stream, and on one side of me is an ER physician, and on the other side is a physicist, and I’m in the middle just thinking, ‘It’s amazing that I’m here,’” Wanzer said.
There’s another story Wanzer enjoys telling, and he said although he has embellished it a bit, it’s true.
“We have hikes that our primary goal is step cleaning,” he said.
The Master Naturalists took their brooms and rakes to the Mount Nebo Steps Trail for such a workday to clean the big stone steps laid by the Civilian Conversation Corps.
“By the time we were at the top, we were so tired we could hardly stand. I was standing and looking down, and all these steps were gleaming. The sunlight all of a sudden burst through the clouds, and these steps, it was almost like they were glowing. In my mind, it’s like I heard from heaven, ‘Thank you for cleaning my steps,’” Wanzer said.
“That’s the thing about what we do. If you stop and think about it, the enchantment and wonderment all around you are right there. You clean the steps and look back at them, and the feeling you get of satisfaction and pride — ‘Man, I really did something.’”
The visitors to the park later might not have noticed the steps were clean, or maybe they did, he said, but they didn’t know who performed the work.
“That’s not really the point. I’m doing it for the park, but I’m also doing it for myself in a sense,” Wanzer said.
He said being in nature takes him back to his childhood, to the feelings of freedom and wonder.
“I use the word maybe too often, but enchantment is something you have as a kid, but as adults, they don’t have anything they do that does that for them — they watch football, watch NASCAR — there’s not anything in there spiritual or anything,” he said.
Wanzer recalled a cleanup he participated in a couple of weeks ago with the Arkansas Canoe Club.
“We were up kind of in the Ozarks, and I saw some trash way down this steep bank,” he said, and he went down to get it.
“All of a sudden, it was really quiet, and I thought, ‘I’m in paradise.’ There were these little bluffs, and I had to stop to take it in a few seconds. Those few seconds, I can bring them up right now,” he said. “When I’m running the machine at work, I can think about that. I can be there in my head, and that’s very important for me.”