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he success of the campaign for the foothills didn’t just put new parkland on the map—it altered the community’s human infrastructure, too. From a small group of volunteers, the local Chelan-Douglas Land Trust transformed into a formidable force of advocates, able to mobilize hundreds of members across the region. Rufus Woods is among them. He worked with The Trust for Public Land to co-chair the $8 million fundraising push that made the community’s con- servation plan a reality.


“For generations, people thought of the foothills as a kind of wasteland,” he says. He’s walking along the Horse Lake Reserve trail, a newly established route through the foothills that’s open to the public. It’s the height of summer and the hills have an austere and uniquely Western beauty—dried wildflowers and golden, windswept grasses. Woods knows the land through and through; a fourth-generation Wenatchee resident, his great-grandfather was among the founders of the City of


Wenatchee and its local paper, The Wenatchee World, which Woods still publishes today. For most of the city’s history, Woods says, residents took open space for granted, thinking of the hills as an ever-present backdrop—if they thought of them at all. “But today is different,” he explains.


“Today, a lot of folks care about this land, and they’re interested in preserv- ing it for generations to come. We seem to have a real community ethic—not just ‘what’s in it for me?’”


Thanks to his neighbors’ proactive approach to the foothills, a 10-minute ride on his mountain bike is all it takes for Woods to get from his front door near downtown Wenatchee to a trail- head. He visits the foothills regularly,


and earlier this year even brought his 87-year-old mother along. It was her first time getting out there, despite having lived in the area for a half-century. She couldn’t have picked a better day, Woods remem- bers—it was spring, the hills blanketed with purple lupine and yellow arrowleaf balsamroot.


“Once people get out here, they can’t help but care about it,” he says.


Another partner in the campaign for the Wenatchee foothills, Columbia Valley Community Health (CVCH), is work- ing to make more such introductions. A nonprofit healthcare provider with seven area clinics—serving patients regardless of their ability to pay—CVCH staff saw a unique opportunity to con- nect Wenatchee residents to their newly protected trail system: they started a popular program to take patients on guided hikes. “People often have the will to make the changes we recommend to their diet and exercise,” says CVCH’s Patrick Bucknum. “But particularly with low-income patients, there can be a lack of either access to or knowledge about healthier foods, or where to get a reasonable amount of exercise without a gym membership. That can be what holds them back.”


Bringing patients to the foothills—a gym open to everyone—can be the push they need. “We’ve got some great stories of people who hiked up and down for the first time and they were sore and sweaty,” Bucknum says. “But they kept going back, and now they’re running 10Ks.”


But to scale this “park prescription” approach, says Bucknum, the commu-


nity needs more safe places to exercise within walking distance of home. East Wenatchee has a population of 13,000 and counting. But the newest city park was built in 1969, when the population was fewer than 1,000 people. Catching up to the community’s needs will take an infusion of funding— and The Trust for Public Land is work- ing to ensure the city finds it. In East Wenatchee, the organization is helping local officials apply for grants and craft a bond measure to fund parks and rec- reation. Polling conducted earlier in the year showed potential for widespread support for the measure—significant in a place where similar requests to voters have often fallen flat.


With an eye to expanding its patient programs in parks, CVCH is doing what it can to support the effort, joining a se- ries of Trust for Public Land community festivals promoting health and wellness. One potential site for a new park in East Wenatchee sits next door to a CVCH clinic. It’s a neighborhood with a high incidence of childhood obesity and no parks—yet.


Back at the community center fiesta, the vision for Kiwanis-Methow Park is starting to take shape. Trust for Public Land program manager Cary Simmons is acting as a scribe, writing attendees’ suggestions on sticky notes and posting them to a board. “Sledding hill,” reads one note; the next, “special-needs play area”; another, “kiosko”—bandstand, a classic feature in parks throughout Latin America.


“It’s not easy to design a park that people will truly love and embrace,” says Simmons. “For us, the most impor- tant planning tool is humility: we don’t


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