STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

The red cliffs towering over Lane Ranch glowed in the evening light as 200 of the Wood River Land Trust's most dedicated supporters gathered for the annual Richard Carr Dinner, a thank-you to the donors who provide more than 80 percent of the organization's operating budget.

Board Chair Karen De Saint Phalle set the tone for the evening, reminding guests that conservation is never the work of one person or one organization: "It takes a community of people like you all to invest your time, your expertise, and your resources.”

The family of Richard Carr, after whom the event is named, was in attendance. Earlier that day, a bench had been dedicated in his honor in Colorado Gulch. "No one exemplified the love of this valley more than Richard Carr," De Saint Phalle told the crowd.

David Barenborg and Glen Shapiro enjoyed a pre-dinner cocktail with the Red Cliffs above Lane Ranch as a backdrop.

But it was Executive Director Amy Trujillo who stole the evening.

Trujillo told the crowd that she nearly cried when she first saw water flowing into the new side channel that the Land Trust and others had created at Ketchum’s Warm Springs Creek as part of a year-long Warm Springs Preserve Restoration Project.

"My first thought was, oh my god, it's real, it's really happening," she said. "I almost couldn't believe it had been so long."

The Warm Springs Preserve project is the largest restoration effort the Wood River Basin has ever seen, and it did not happen overnight. The Land Trust first got involved more than 20 years ago when the golf course on the property was decommissioned.

WRLT Executive Director Amy Trujillo and Cece Albertson, who is studying ways to mitigate wildlife collisions, greeted donors as they arrived at the “Thank you” dinner held at a home in Lane Ranch.

The 65-acre site could easily have become a hotel and housing development. Instead, through permanent deed restrictions and a partnership with the City of Ketchum, the land was protected and guaranteed public access in perpetuity. More than 1,200 community members contributed donations to make it happen.

Trujillo shared the science behind the restoration work and the speed at which nature is responding. When crews dug holes for engineered log jams alongside the creek, the soil was bone dry, the water table having dropped dramatically from years of disconnection from the floodplain.

Then they opened the new channel. A month or two later, volunteers arrived to plant trees and found water coming up from the ground as they dug.

"The water table has responded that quickly," Trujillo said. "This place is coming back to life."

Vicki Shapiro watches as a magician performs a few pre-dinner card tricks.

But it was a story about trees that brought tears to the eyes of some of those nibbling on their well-seasoned chicken dinners prepared by caterer Becky Ludwig.

Trujillo told about an interview she had heard with Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of "Braiding Sweetgrass." Kimmerer posed a question: What if when you were walking in the woods, the trees actually recognized you? What if they were happy that you had come?

Trujillo said she thought about that and looked up at the trees to see the leaves fluttering in the breeze.

"I don't know if anyone knows sign language," she said, "But, if you do, the sign is for applause."

Clif McIntosh said the Wood River Land Trust has an incredible track record: “It would be great if we had national parks or state parks everywhere, but I don’t think we can count on politicians to do the right thing, so that’s where organizations like the Land Trust come in.”

For a second, she imagined hearing the trees say, "Hello, Amy, we're so excited you're here."

She shared her experience with her young niece. And, when they went for a walk the next day, her niece spotted fluttering leaves.

"Look, Aunt Amy, they're excited to see us," she said

The idea proved contagious. When Trujillo’s partner Christian went hunting with a friend, Christian looked at a stand of fluttering aspen leaves and said, "Hello, we're so excited you're here." His buddy thought they were crazy. But, later that day, they came to another stand of aspen, and Trujillo watched the big, burly guy reach out and grab one of the leaves, while saying, "Hello."

"I bet you guys are going to think it when you walk out of here and see all those aspen leaves fluttering," she added. "So, you're welcome for that."

The laughter settled into something deeper as Trujillo turned to the heart of her message. "Perhaps the biggest challenge for us isn't actually climate change, or habitat loss, or water scarcity," she said. "It's that we have forgotten that to our core, we belong to these places."

Then Trujillo shifted, becoming impassioned.

She challenged the audience to shift their thinking from occupying the land to belonging to it. Instead of asking how to control a river, ask how it wants to move. Instead of building wherever there is open ground, ask where the animal herds migrate so disruption is minimal.

"It wouldn't be asking, ‘What can we get out of this place?’ " she said. "It would be what does this place need us to be thinking about as we're creating our lives?"

When the scale of that challenge feels overwhelming, Trujillo said she focuses on the next right thing. "What's the next piece of ground that we can protect? What's the next stretch of river that we can restore?"

When it comes to that, the Wood River Land Trust has been on a roll. This past year the Land Trust was able to protect Hailey Hot Springs Ranch, a top conservation priority since the organization was founded over 30 years ago. In March, again with donors’ help, it closed on Spirit Woman Ranch--80 acres in Slaughterhouse Canyon that opens public access to thousands of acres of public land beyond it.

By the end of this summer, the trust hopes to close on a parcel that will expand Howard Preserve. And the team is working on projects that will protect an additional 4,000 acres of critical wildlife habitat, agricultural land and wildlife corridors.

Since its founding, the organization has protected 31,000 acres in the valley, established 21 public preserves, placed 46 conservation easements and restored 15 miles of the Bigwood River and its tributaries.

Thirty-one thousand acres, De Saint Phalle said, is three times the combined acreage of Sun Valley, Ketchum, Hailey and Bellevue.

Next year, the Land Trust will break ground on two more construction projects in the upper watershed, thanks to a new master agreement with the U.S. Forest Service, a partnership with Trout Unlimited-Hemingway Chapter and donors giving to the River Enhancement Fund.

"Someday, someone that you love will be walking in a place that you helped create," Trujillo said as the evening wound down. "They may not know all the work that went into it, all the people that were involved, all the meetings that took place. But they will know how that place makes them feel."

She paused: "I hope for even just a second, maybe they will hear the trees welcoming them home."