I try to manage the preserve using a principle of continuous improvement. Each year, things get a little closer to ideal: the trails become a little more visitor-friendly, the habitat improves, and we expand our programs.
This means that when the boardwalk gets rebuilt, it has to be better than the one I built before (not necessarily a tall order for some potential Eagle Scout). Each year when I repost a section of the property boundary I try to have it be more accurate. Our resource inventories gradually become more complete, the hazard trees reduced, the buildings in better repair. And although invasive plants are increasing everywhere, I hope to manage them in a new section of the preserve each year, or get to a project that I never was able to before.
These are not small tasks in the face of the entropy that happens everywhere around us: rust, rot and gravity rule as a part of the cycles of life.
Of course the ideal of continuous improvement doesn't apply everywhere. For example, when I put up the Christmas lights at home, I don't try to make the display bigger and better each year. If I had, by now the house would be visible from outer space...
