PHOTO: AJ MALLORY PHOTO: CONI MARTIN
MORGAN SCHERER
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON BY NEIL SCHULMAN
“W
e’re a water-faring people. This work is about survival of the spirit.”
If you’re an Olympic competitor, you have to
thrive on challenges. Still, for Morgan Scherer, a sprint kayaker in the 1992 Barcelona Games and the recently appointed Executive Director of the Washington Water Trails Association, her new chal- lenge is very different: she’s guiding a resurrection. Washington has all the ingredients for thriv-
ing water trails: a large population near Puget Sound, a rich boating heritage, hundreds of miles of protected water and islands, and a world-class destination in the San Juan Islands. But a powerful double-whammy hit in the late 2000s. The Great Recession sapped individual in- comes, and membership dues—the largest source of WWTA funding—dropped by half. Staff dwin- dled from five in 2006 to three part-timers today. At the same time, budget cuts in parks districts forced the closure of many overnight sites. “With the cuts, fewer people know about the
trail,” says Scherer. “You can’t access something you don’t know about. So fewer people use the trail, so you don’t get agency support. It’s a down- ward spiral we’re trying to reverse.” Salvation lies in broadening community sup- port. A passionate kayaker who built her own Aleutian skin-on-frame, Scherer has also worked for human-powered transportation on land, as a bicycle advocate. She knows buoying membership among fellow paddlers is just part of the strategy. In Washington, where most of the shoreline is privately owned, water trail sites are also critical to non-boaters. “Anyone who wants to walk on the beach benefits from what we do,” Scherer says. WWTA must also re-imagine membership. “Join- ing something means something different in the age of Facebook and Twitter than it did 20 years ago,” she notes. Between rebuilding the organization’s base and putting out the many daily fires in a small orga- nization, Scherer is optimistic. Membership is on the rise for the first time since 2007. New sites are coming online. In summer, two staffers ply the Sound in kayaks, spreading word about the Casca- dia Marine Trail. The tide is beginning to turn.
PLAN YOUR TRIP
Washington Water Trails manages six trails. The flagship, the Cascadia Marine Trail, consists of 58 campsites and 120 day-use sites from Olympia to the San Juan Islands and the Canadian border.
BEST SEASON: Late spring through fall.
SKILLS: Ability to navigate the Sound’s complex currents and shipping traffic. MORE INFO:
www.wwta.org
54 | ADVENTURE KAYAK
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