84-year-old ‘gnome’ is a volunteer trailblazer
By Bob Findlay 
| July 31, 2009 | 12:01 PM
Crew leader Steve Austin, second from right, and five other volunteers move a large rock into place during a Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado trail-restoration project in Colorado National Monument. Austin fashioned the tool they're using, and it's named for him. (RMI photo by Bob Findlay)
Call Steve Austin a gnome and he’ll take it as a compliment. Gnomes, he said, are “people who work in the background and get things done.”
That’s a perfect description of the person who has worked more projects for Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado than anyone else since VOC’s beginnings 25 years ago. Austin last year was given the inaugural Mount Elbert Award for reaching his 200th project, and so far he’s the only recipient of the engraved belt buckle.
Austin is 84 and one of two longtime VOC volunteers affectionately called gnomes; the other is Glenn Ward. On a weekend VOC project, you’ll soon pick both out: Ward will be talking, while Austin is the silent type.
How did the gnome thing get started? Austin couldn’t quite remember, but Tom Ledgerwood, a VOC volunteer and office assistant, recalled that “Steve was quietly standing around one day, as he always does, and someone asked, ‘Has anyone seen the gnome?’ It got a big laugh.”
Austin accepted the joke on his age and wrinkled face with good humor, and it quickly became a term of respect.
“People started giving him garden gnomes,” Ledgerwood said, “and it carried on from there.”
Some of those gnomes and others he’s bought are in Austin’s Northglenn home, where he lives with his dog, Misty. His wife, Shirley, died in 2004. He’s owned the home for 40 years, ever since his employer, Bell Laboratories, moved its plant from New Jersey to the Denver area in 1969. An electrical engineer, Austin retired from what by then was AT&T in 1987 and joined VOC the same year.
He was looking for something to do, he said, and saw a notice in the newspaper about a project to build the Carpenter Peak Trail in Roxborough State Park.
“I enjoyed it,” he said, “and it introduced me to rock work, which interested me.”
A way with rocks
During his 22 years of working almost every summer project that VOC conducts, Austin has become a rock-work legend. Rocks are used extensively in trail work — stacked to create walls in low spots and switchbacks, strategically placed as steps, dug in to divert water — and generally the bigger the rock the better.
People teaming up to move a really big rock often use an “Austin,” a tool named for its inventor.
When he started, Austin explained, VOC volunteers were moving large rocks by rolling them onto brewery blankets and dragging them. Even though the blankets — used by Coors to filter beer and then donated to VOC — were made of a very tough fabric, they would shred in a weekend. So he started tinkering.
First he made a web of rope, but that, too, shredded quickly. Needing something more durable, he came up with chains. By cutting open a few links to make connections and welding them shut again, he fashioned a chain web, to which he attached ropes to form a loop on each of four corners. The rock is rolled onto the chain web, and two steel pipes are threaded through the rope loops, enabling four to six people to carry the rock as if on a stretcher.
That was in 1996, and the Austin rock sling has been used not only by VOC but also other trail-building groups ever since.
Austin also has used his engineering skills to fashion clips that prevent the wind from lifting VOC’s two huge tents off their poles and a system of pulleys and ceiling hooks to stretch those tents out to dry in the VOC’s warehouse.
His ingenuity shows up again in the Toyota Tacoma pickup truck that serves as his home on weekend projects. Bolts on each corner of a plywood sheet allow him to level his bed under a camper shell. He adds an air mattress and sleeping bag, tosses in his backpack (always filled with such essentials as gloves, rain jacket, tools and a first-aid kit) and he’s ready to go.
Given his longevity in VOC and all his contributions, I asked Austin if he had a title within the organization. No, he said, he’s a crew leader, one of many, and that’s the way he likes it.
“I love the work — love running a crew,” he said. “It’s like directing an orchestra. You can’t do it all yourself, but get a crew going and you get a lot done.”
But Austin does get a lot done himself. He trains and mentors new crew leaders through the Outdoor Stewardship Institute and teaches trail building and rock work to youngsters in the Colorado Youth Corps. He’s on VOC’s tool committee and took a class in welding so he could repair the tools. He took the Forest Service‘s sawyer class and bought his own chain saw so he could clear tamarisk. He’s trained in ecological restoration.
And he doesn’t stop with trail work. Austin also mentors a few students at a nearby elementary school in advanced math; repairs talking-book machines for the blind; fixes bicycles to be given away under a city of Northglenn program; serves as treasurer of three organizations, including a citizens’ group that helps Northglenn police with traffic control and fundraising; runs the Northglenn site of an Adams County program to help people with their taxes from January to April. Oh, and he tends a little city flower bed.
Does he have an off-season? “November to December lightens up a bit,” he said.
A spirit of service
The Mount Elbert Award is only the beginning of the recognition accorded him. VOC also has named him at various times Volunteer of the Year and Mentor of the Year. He’s received every award VOC gives out, projects manager Matt Martinez said, and he gets nominated again every year.
REI presented Austin with its Stewards for the Environment award in 2004, which included a $500 gift certificate for him and a $20,000 grant for VOC.
He won the prestigious Minoru Yasui Award in 2002 for “outstanding volunteer commitment and service” and was named Outstanding Volunteer in 2001 by National Philanthropy Day in Colorado.
Austin inspires people, Martinez said. “It’s kind of cool to have someone around who you feel is a hero. You don’t come in contact with people like that very often.”
Part of that inspiration derives from watching a small man in his 80s muscling rocks around. Apparently his family doesn’t give in to age. His mother lived to 105 and his paternal grandfather to 101. His grandfather was a supermarket checker who never used a register and did all the addition in his head, Austin said, and he didn’t retire until he was 100.
“He always said that as long as he stayed active he was fine,” Austin said. He chuckled and answered “Yes” when I asked if that was his approach. Any secrets? He chuckled again: “I take my vitamins.”
forest service, gnome, Minoru Yasui, Northglenn, rock, roxborough state park, Steve Austin, trail, volunteer, Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado
