On a very warm Saturday in June of this year, NeighborSpace hosted a trail cleanup on 4.5 acres of heavily forested land that we own in the Norman Creek Community in Essex. As I walked down the trail looking for our Program Manager, Patrick Filbert, I was stunned to find Charlie Conklin vehemently hacking away at ivy that was strangling a tree. It turns out that Patrick had asked for Charlie’s help and advice. Charlie was glad to give it, but took things one step further by showing up in person and even recruiting a friend, Carl Maynard, to help out.

Charlie was honored with the Hero of the Green Award on September 14 at the Gunpowder Valley Conservancy’s 30 th Anniversary on the Water in Middle River. The award recognizes “fearless grassroots activists working to protect the environment and their communities.” There can be no doubt that Charlie meets this measure. He’s been volunteering for environmental causes, especially the Gunpowder Valley Conservancy, for 30 years.

The Program for the event hints at what is very special about Charlie:

Charlie Conklin has never met a stranger …. With his warm smile, a twinkle in his eye and his enthusiasm for life, he has a genius for creating instant friendships. From his days as a corporate manager at Bethlehem Steel through his years of volunteer work and church missions, Charlie has sparked and inspired lifelong relationships. He finds nature lovers and turns them into conservationists. And he loves the trees and streams of Maryland so much that he has dedicated much of his life to preserving and restoring them.

He has a generous spirit that is both disarming and heartening. It is reminiscent of Kahlil Gibran’s philosophy on giving:

… [T]here are those who have little and give it all.

These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.

And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;

They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.

Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth. (Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, p. 20)

And so we salute, congratulate and thank Charlie for being a great friend to conservation, someone who, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.”