Earlier this year, I went for a hike in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. Making my way through the lush and overgrown vegetation, I talked with the people walking beside me. Our destination wasn’t a beautiful overlook or historical marker — it was a huge patch of invasive, nonnative Himalayan ginger that had been steadily taking over that section of forest near the park’s famous Kilauea crater.
For four hours, armed with loppers and worn work gloves, about a dozen other Stewardship at the Summit program volunteers and I cut and stacked the ginger, ultimately clearing about an acre of the fast-growing perennial that crowds out native plants. When Jane Field, the program volunteer coordinator, announced we were done for the day, I was filled with the sense of accomplishment and pride that only comes from hard manual labor.
I love our national parks, so much so that I have a modified NPS arrowhead logo tattooed on my left leg. I’ve visited every national park in the contiguous United States, as well as in Hawai‘i and half the ones in Alaska. Each year, I hand my credit card to a park employee, who hands me back an America the Beautiful annual pass; it’s the best $80 I spend every year. Over the decades, the parks have given me so much — peace of mind in an ever-tumultuous world, the feeling of accomplishment upon reaching the end of a particularly brutal hike, the nonstop sense of awe being surrounded by the most beautiful scenery in the world. I knew I needed to give back, especially now.
The National Park Service manages 433 sites, including national parks, monuments, battlefields, and the White House. At a time when national-park visitation has risen to all-time highs, the NPS has lost nearly a quarter of its workforce and had its budget cut by $1.2 billion, which could shutter 350 NPS sites across the country.
Despite being beloved by Americans and widely hailed as “America’s best idea,” our national parks have never been in more peril, and it’s never been more important to lend a hand.
I’m making an effort to volunteer more in our national parks going forward and encouraging others to do the same. You don’t necessarily need to toil away in a forest to give back, as I did cutting invasives; our national parks have all sorts of volunteer opportunities that match a wide range of skills and interests.
Over the years, I’ve met hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteers, from the retired schoolteacher serving as an interpretive guide in Canyonlands, to the couple serving as Badlands campground hosts in exchange for a free summer campsite, to the dozens of smiling volunteers in visitor centers across the country.
Talking with retired couple Jane and her husband Paul Field — who lead the Stewardship at the Summit program at Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park — I learned their volunteer group has provided more than 2,200 hours of maintenance in recent years, which is an awful lot of invasive ginger destroyed. Long Island resident Rafael Ramirez was working in Hawai‘i as a contractor when he learned about the volunteer group in the park. He’d volunteered once before with his wife and three kids.
“We love [giving back],” Ramirez said. “We’ve been to hundreds of state and national parks, and it’s a great feeling to help fix things that everyone can enjoy.”
If you don’t have the time or energy to volunteer, there are other things you can do to support our national parks. Donate to an organization like the National Park Foundation or a Friends Group — nonprofits that partner with specific parks, such as Friends of the Smokies or Grand Canyon Conservancy.
In 2024, over 138,000 volunteers donated 3.7 million hours to the National Park Service. That may seem like a lot, but those numbers are down compared to previous years, and we’ll need even more if we’re going to keep the NPS afloat.
Hopefully I’ll see you out there. I might even show you my tattoo.
Former newspaper reporter Robert Annis is an award-winning outdoor-travel journalist (and certified bear guide!) with work appearing in National Geographic, Outside, Sierra, Men’s Journal, and the Chicago Tribune.
This article is featured in the September/October 2025 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.
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