By Brandt Mannchen

Volunteers from East Texas met on February 21, 2022  and planted thousands of Longleaf Pine seedlings in Big Thicket National Preserve to assist the National Park Service (NPS) and National Parks and Conservation Association (NPCA) in restoration of this important but diminished forest ecosystem.

The day was overcast with a chance of more rain (it had rained the night before) but we made it okay during the planting.  The NPS had three planting areas and I chose the one closest to the entrance road.  Age makes you do things like that.  I’m glad I did because few people were planting in that area and when my friend David arrived, we had the planting area virtually to ourselves.

The NPS had burned the area we were planting which made it much easier to move around.  We planted six bags of Longleaf Pine seedlings in about 3 hours.  This equated to almost 200 Longleaf Pine seedlings put in the ground.  It was wet and muddy, but I felt very proud that the work we were doing on behalf of the Sierra Club would leave behind a living legacy.

The Longleaf Pine seedlings will grow and become a complex forest, woodland, savannah with dozens of wildflowers and grasses added to the Longleaf Pines and other woody plants.  It was great to breath fresh air and see the green of Nature once again.

Planting those Longleaf Pines made me happy, and I thought about the many years I had been doing this work.  It was the stuff made of life and I look forward to other planting adventures in the future.  Long live the Big Thicket!