News from Wayne County Hanksville Trees

by Adus F. Dorsey

WAYNE CO. - Much to the appreciation of the Tree Utah staff—Amy Nay, Executive Director and Planting Coordinator and arborist and all-around good guy Ian Peisner— half of Hanksville showed up in force at the Town Park on Tuesday, May 16, 2023, to plant trees. The large contingency of Hanksvillians, ranging in ages from young to aging gracefully, were wearing a wide variety of hats and gloves, packing various implements of destruction, with full bottles of highly rated Hanksville sunscreen in their pockets, which was a welcome sight as ever has been seen in any nationwide Home and Garden publication.

Tree Utah was the brainchild of a Salt Lake Tribune journalist, Pepper Provenzano, in 1988, and became a nonprofit in 1989. Since then, thousands of volunteers, staff, and board have stepped forward to nurture and grow the organization and its mission. Tree Utah works with students, municipalities, local businesses, community groups, and volunteers to plant trees in public spaces throughout the state. Tree Utah plants trees of all types and sizes to make Utah a greener place to live, work, and play. To fulfill their mission, Tree Utah seeks to educate communities about the environmental and social benefits that trees provide. Trees improve quality of life in multiple ways. Tree Utah has planted over 400K trees with the help of more than 185K volunteers and donors around Utah.

Partnering with Tree Utah, the Utah Office of Tourism's (UOT) Rachel Bremer, Global Markets Director and UOT staff Jody Blaney, Zach Fryne, Emma Cheketts, Liz Wilson Peck, Arianna Rees and Ben Dodds, and Nycole Durfey, Wayne County Tourism Director, were on hand in Hanksville to assist and get some Hanksville soil under their fingernails while planting trees.

The Utah Office of Tourism's involvement in the Hanksville tree planting project is in conjunction with Germany-based tour operator America Unlimited and Tree Utah for a multi-year sustainability partnership, a comprehensive international market- ing campaign that empowers international visitors to participate in communityled sustainability initiatives that create proactive methods to minimize impacts of travel and recreation in Utah and give back to impacted communities.

In Hanksville, Tanesha Ekker spearheaded the town park tree planting effort, flashing the call for volunteers all across town and Facebook. And when the word gets out that volunteers are needed in Hanksville for a community related project, people show up ready to go to work—even if it is Tuesday at noon—especially if something green is involved.

Rumor has it that town man Eric Wells was up before dawn and at the Hanksville town park in the dark filling the town water truck and digging holes for twenty, near full grown trees with his trusty Mini Excavator, much to the amazement and delight of the Tree Utah and UOT crew.

At high noon, the temperature in Hanksville was hovering around 72 degrees. It was then Amy who rolled up with cartons of sandwiches, and the drinks were already on ice. Fortified with fuel, it was time to get the tree planting program under way, going from right to left in the large circle introductions took place. From the back of a large panel truck, shovels and rakes appeared. The trees were already in place next to the prepared holes Eric had provided for the event.

Like a platoon of U.S. Marine tree planters, everyone gathered around the first hole, and Tree Utah guru / arborist Ian Peisner launched into a fact-filled course on how to properly plant a tree. First order of business was to release the tree from the little green bands that held it up upright for the journey to Hanksville, and next was to gently lift the tree from the planter bucket it had been growing in since birth. With the agility of a gazelle master arborist, Ian hopped into the hole and began massaging the root ball to expose the bound tree roots to give them a head start once the tree was placed into its forever home, an intricate type of dance that was to be exercised on the twenty new Tree Utah trees being planted in the Hanksville Town Park for future generations to enjoy and for the young in the group to be able to proudly say, “I helped plant this tree!”

Once the tree planting instruction session was complete, everyone spread out tree to tree and went to work, working together, making new friends, renewing old friendships and getting dirty for a community cause. The whole treeplanting event took less than an hour; it was like watching a finely tuned construction machine at work—many hands do make light work. Hanksville is truly a proud community that lives, works and knows how to have fun together.

Thank you, TreeUtah and the Utah Office of Tourism and all of their generous supporters, and to all the willing volunteers that took time out of their day to show up at the Hanksville Town Park to plant trees.