Love of Nature Inspires Centralia Man to Spend Every Day Walking, Cleaning Seminary Hill Trails

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David Jensen lives by the philosophy that there are three things everyone needs in life and the fourth is a bonus — shelter, a roof over your head, clothes on your back for the season, and food in your belly. The fourth thing is having someone to love you — everything else is extra, he said. 

In 2018, Jensen calculated that he walked 4,300 miles on the Seminary Hill Natural Area trails and to and from his house on Salzer Valley Road, cleaning up any trash he sees along the way and making the area more enjoyable for everyone.

“When I came up here a couple of years ago it was neglected so bad,” he said. “There was just so much garbage and encampments of everybody living up here on the hill — needles everywhere. We’re talking about 13 to 15 encampments.”

Jensen, now 61 years old, has walked the Seminary Hill trails every day, usually for six to eight hours a day, for the past two years and maintains the trails by picking up any garbage he sees and by using his cordless leaf blower to keep the trails clear. 

When asked  what draws him to spend so much time walking the city-owned trails, Jensen said fresh air and people. 

“I must meet over 200 people a month on this hill. In the last month, I’ve already given out 300 maps (of the trails). People are starting to come back who quit coming here two years ago because of the mess that was up here,” said Jensen.

In 1971, when Jensen was 12 years old, his family moved to Centralia. He remembers building ramps and riding his bike on Seminary Hill with his brother. Now, after living in various states on the West Coast and moving back to Centralia, he is back on Seminary Hill enjoying nature. 

“There are some things I see up here that are so beautiful and some things that are just nasty. The beautiful is the animals and the beauty of the plants and trees and stuff. I’ve seen bears, cougars, foxes, owls, any kind of bird you can imagine, eagles and hawks,” said Jensen.

Some of the “nastiness” Jensen sees is the needles and trash piling up in the parking lot and throughout the trail every week. He also often sees camps set up and people sleeping in the woods as well as couples getting a little too frisky on the trails.

“I have seen people shooting up right on the trail sitting on one of my benches. I tell them to put that away and get out of the park or I’ll call the sheriff. I’ve got to be like that or it will just keep happening,” said Jensen.

Jensen said he has witnessed people cutting down maple trees and stealing the valuable wood. 



“We’ve lost five to seven 100-year-old maple trees that someone was cutting down and taking blocks out and stealing the wood. The most recent time I saw them was on Presidents Day. I found two chainsaws up there hidden that they were using to cut the trees down,” said Jensen.

Jensen has spent time and money to make the Seminary Hill trails an enjoyable place to be. He built 15 benches so people can have a place to rest while walking the trails and he purchased roofing tiles to provide traction on the wooden steps that can be found throughout the trails.

Jensen said his favorite season to walk the trail is summer because there are the most hours of daylight and he can walk the trails until 10 at night. He has six children, three of whom still live in town, and he takes his four-year-old grandson, Axel, on his walk with him almost every morning.

Jensen’s volunteer work doesn’t end with Seminary Hill. He cleaned up leaves around the post office before the Fourth of July parade last year and this past Wednesday he used his leaf blower to clean up George Washington Park. 

“I wish there were more people that do what I do. The world would get along a lot better,” he said.

Jensen has almost 1,000 photos that he has taken at Seminary Hill of all of the wildlife and natural wonders he has seen over the course of the past two years.

“There are people up here that just want to talk to somebody — they may be dealing with problems with drugs or a divorce and need to talk to somebody. I’m up there for that too. I do this for the people that walk up here,” said Jensen.

Jensen was awarded the annual Rufus Kiser Award this year by the Friends of the Seminary Hill Natural Area which is an award given to recognize someone who has gone above and beyond in the service of our community at Seminary Hill.

Robert Godsey, a founding member of the Friends of Seminary Hill Natural Area, said that because of Jensen’s volunteer work the natural area looks the best it’s looked in 90 years.

“One of his first volunteer projects in the Natural Area was the making and setting of the dozen or more benches— not just two or three but the dozen or more. It was after that when he undertook the trail maintenance project that continues to this day. (The trails) haven’t been this clear since the days when some of them were hand-dug as horse trails in a 1930s WPA project,” said Godsey.