A Season Behind the Screen

When I joined the Kitsap Audubon Society three years ago, I wasn’t just looking for birds. I was looking for people. Community. A place to belong.

I have made real friends — people I now see regularly on trails and shorelines. But the broader sense of community I hoped for felt harder to find. Not absent, just undefined. Loosely formed. A little quiet.

Now here I am: board treasurer, social media manager, field trip leader, organizer of board game nights and trivia evenings. Somewhere along the way, instead of simply joining the community I hoped to find, I began trying to build it.

It’s the rainy season in Port Orchard. The skies are gray, the trails muddy, and I’ve been spending more hours behind a computer than behind binoculars. On the surface, it feels like distance from birds. But what I’m really working on feels just as important.

When I joined, I wasn’t given much guidance. That’s familiar territory for me. In work and in life, I’ve often been handed the keys without a map. There’s freedom in that — the ability to shape something your own way. But I’ve come to realize most people don’t thrive in that kind of ambiguity.

Most people want to be welcomed in.
Shown where to start.
Taught. Included.
Given small ways to contribute before being asked to create.

I’ve watched volunteers drift away — not because they didn’t care, but because no one invested in them. No one showed them the path forward.

So I’ve been asking myself a simple question: What would I have wanted when I first joined?

The answer has become my blueprint.

I’m building an onboarding process — something that clearly introduces the mission, outlines volunteer opportunities, and makes personal connections early. I’m rethinking how we present ourselves and how we invite others in. I’m trying to make involvement feel less like wandering into a room full of strangers and more like being greeted at the door.

It takes time. It takes hours that could be spent watching shorebirds or scanning for seabirds. And I miss that.

But if this work succeeds — if we become a community-first organization, if more people feel ownership, if new birders feel less like imposters and more like contributors — then my impact multiplies. Instead of one pair of binoculars, there are dozens.

Maybe this season behind the screen is still birding, just at a different scale.

I joined looking for a flock.
Maybe building one is how I finally find it.

Participants in my first Trivia Night