LEWISTON — It makes sense that most of the stewards voluntarily managing the grounds at Thorncrag Nature Sanctuary don’t care all that much about birds.

John Myrand, like most of the other volunteers, spends his time looking down — for trash, branches that may block a trail, rocks and roots that create tripping hazards — and not looking up for bright feathers and beaks.

“I really do it for the exercise,” Myrand said. “It’s a good daily walk, up and down the hill. We’ve seen it a lot and we’re very familiar with it and we can see when something has changed.”

Sure, Myrand paid pretty close attention last year when the woodpeckers began concentrating on one particular tree along the green trail. They eventually put enough holes in it that it collapsed. He was starting his morning hike on the trail when he heard it crack and found it blocking the trail.

He went home, got his chain saw and he and his friends got busy cutting it up and opening the trail again.

Gary Maurer, land steward for the sanctuary, said it couldn’t exist without the loosely organized team taking special care of trails. Mostly retired folks who live nearby, they tend to show up at the Thorncrag parking lot on their own schedules, patrolling their own favorite section of the nature park, originally a bird sanctuary.

And if something happens, such as a fallen tree that needs to be chopped up, he knows he can give them a call.

“The problem I really have is not doing the big projects,” Maurer said. “It’s doing the day-to-day stuff: walking the trails, making sure everything is fine, monitoring the dog situation, picking up trash. That’s what they do, and I don’t know if we could survive without them.”

Myrand was a runner until knee surgery forced him to hang up his track shoes for good. He started hiking for his health — the hills were good therapy for his legs as he recovered from the surgery — and he started visiting Thorncrag regularly.

“That’s how Gary found most of us,” Myrand said. “He saw me here walking, and he’d chat and all that. And all of sudden he said, ‘You have any spare time?'”

Myrand has been monitoring the conditions at Thorncrag for about four years. He usually hikes with friend Irene Mailhot of Old Greene Road and the pair set a blistering pace — pounding the familiar trail with an eye out for damage, all the while flicking branches and smaller obstructions out of their way with their hiking poles.

“I love to see the change of the seasons,” Mailhot said. “In a month from now, it’s going to look like a colored carpet here.”

It’s a relatively small area, 372 acres overall and roughly 5 miles of maintained trails. Still, Myrand thinks it’s amazingly rustic and remote for a preserve in the middle of Maine’s second-largest city.

“There are places here, little stretches of the trail, where you would swear you’re in the middle of the Appalachian Trail,” Myrand said. “You go a little farther and you see houses, but it doesn’t feel like it’s in a neighborhood.”

Know someone with a deep well of unlimited public spirit? Someone who gives of their time to make their community a better place? Then nominate them for Kudos. Send their name and the place where they do their good deeds to reporter Scott Taylor at [email protected] and we’ll do the rest.