Spotlight on Volunteers
September 2005

Each month this column features one of the more than 6,000 people who each year contribute more than 200,000 hours to enrich Boulder County programs.

Charlotte Jorgensen – She’s a Nature Artist for Parks & Open Space

 She didn’t even know she WAS an artist when she first started sketching animals and plants during her nature studies.   Over the years, though, with a class here and a class there, Charlotte Jorgensen has developed into a volunteer AND artist who has a showing of 10 of her paintings at the Mary Williams Fine Arts Gallery at 2116 Pearl!  She’s also still drawing illustrations for the quarterly publication from Parks and Open Space,  “Images,” chock full of articles and events and projects.  Even when she lived in Telluride a few years ago, Charlotte kept volunteering – mailing her illustrations to Pascale!  (Fried – editor of the magazine and Volunteer Coordinator for Parks and Open Space.)

 “Charlotte’s artistic talents really make “Images” bloom,” says Pascale Fried,  Interpretive Specialists Supervisor and editor of “Images.”  She is so devoted to the work here at Parks and Open Space and is just the best person in the world to work with.  We really couldn’t get along without her!”

Charlotte first began volunteering for Parks and Open Space as a Volunteer Naturalist about 20 years ago!  She laughs when she says she quit working as a physician’s assistant to get “back to nature!” – her first love.  Moving from central Florida (and a ranching/citrus-growing family) to Colorado for college, she majored in Environmental Biology at CU. After living many places, she eventually came back to Boulder about 1986.   Once she began volunteering for Boulder County, she led hikes, did school presentations and talked to groups of seniors about nature and all its great diversity.  And as she got to be a better artist, she began doing the sketches for the quarterly magazine. 

 In the intervening years, Charlotte began to also volunteer for the Nature Conservancy, a world wide environmental group that works to preserve natural areas.  She has just returned from nine days in British Columbia, where she studied and interacted with other volunteers in the 21-MILLION-acre Great Bear Rain Forest (Yes – that’s 21 MILLION acres of mainly pristine rainforest which the Nature Conservancy and other environmental organizations are trying to preserve.  Working with logging companies, native tribes and governments of Canada, the Nature Conservancy is working to preserve the forest in a way that doesn’t totally shut off ALL of it, but does any cutting  in an environmentally positive way and saves in pristine condition the most biologically diverse portions. 

 Charlotte stayed on a 74-foot boat built by the University of Washington, going 7 miles an hour through the fiord-like areas of western British Columbia.  …The boat is called the Catalyst!…a good name for a craft carrying people who want to make this formula work!  Charlotte’s enthusiasm is contagious as she tells about seeing bears catching salmon.  “And do you know,” she says,”the dna of salmon.left on the ground by the animals feeding on them…. is found in the dna of the huge TREES!”  It’s a real demonstration of interdependence between living things, says Charlotte.

Charlotte feels that interdependence all the time, she says, and expresses it in her art.  She does watercolor, gouache (a more opaque version of watercolor, allowing for more layering) and is about to take an oil painting workshop.  She has spent lots of her volunteer time as a Volunteer Naturalist helping young people stay connected to the natural world.  In fact, she has volunteered to come back to the work of Volunteer Naturalist to teach a young person course as she used to do.  “Nature is like a friend that will always be there,” says Charlotte.  “It can give you inspiration or peace or whatever you need when you look at maybe a flower, a tree, other parts of nature.   Children need to know this.” 

Charlotte, married to husband Richard, a custom home builder, has a 15-year old son, Hunter.   The three of them have taken lots of trips together – one to Africa with schoolmates of Hunter’s and their parents.   Charlotte’s face lights up as she talks about the Kenyan children who had made their own “soccer balls” out of wire and cloth, and these school children from the U.S. bring with them new soccer balls and pumps as gifts, then playing a game right then and there on that red earth.  “Hunter came running up afterwards, saying, out of breath and happy, “Mom, they smoked us!’” 

When asked why she volunteers, Charlotte says, “Well, this is my home and we have to take care of the home we live in.”  She adds, “I’m blessed to have time to do it and this work has become part of my extended family.”  “I just hope,” she adds with a smile, “That when I’m a doddering old lady, some young person will take ME on a walk in the beautiful outdoors we have here.”  She talks about starting her volunteer work at the Senior Center in Boulder, where she led nature hikes, and, she says, “They taught ME so much…about plants and wildlife.”   . 

“Every time you go out, nature gives you a gift,” says Charlotte.  Sometimes it is not the gift you expected, but it is always there!”  That’s why she keeps volunteering, she says, and finding gifts for HERSELF in the process. 

(Look for the fall issue of “Images” at various information stands around the county buildings and get your own subscription by e-mailing Sukie Williams – swilliams@co.boulder.co.us or calling her at 303-441-4557)  Out-of-county subscribers pay $4 annually.)

 To volunteer in Parks and Open Space, contact Pascale Fried, pfried@co.boulder.co.us  or call 303-441-4559.  To find out more about other volunteer programs at Boulder County, contact Jana Mendez, jlmendez@co.boulder.co.us