Since moving to Vancouver to retire in 2017, Paul Stasz has been taking walks along the Confluence Land Bridge.

“It was a mess,” Stasz recalled of the pedestrian bridge over state Highway 14 that connects the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site to the Columbia River.

Stasz, who worked for a forest products company, described seeing bare dirt in plant beds along the path, as well as unkempt and cluttered trees, some of which had clipped and deadened tops.

But on Saturday, Stasz was more at ease with the state of the path as the sound of scraping shovels filled the air and volunteers scurried around carrying litter and weeds freshly plucked from the ground.

“It’s slowly coming back to being a healthy, urban forest,” he said. He added, “As you can see, it takes a lot of work to do this.”