Pat Milliren, a member of a small, interfaith group called the North Olympic Creation Care Alliance, heard recently about something called the Global Work Party. The more she learned about this gathering, planned for Oct. 10, 2010 — 10-10-10 — the more she wanted to be part of it.

So Milliren, who lives in Port Angeles, got the Creation Care Alliance connected with www.350.org, the website that explains the Global Work Party’s mission: to tackle the Earth’s climate crisis.

The effort focuses on the number 350, as in parts-per-million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“If we can’t get below that, scientists say, the damage we’re already seeing from global warming will continue and accelerate, wrote 350.org’s leaders.

“But 350 is more than a number,” they said. “It’s a symbol of where we need to head as a planet.”

Those leaders include Bill McKibben, the educator and environmentalist whose books include Deep Economy and Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age.

Milliren and the alliance decided their role in the work party would be to inspire North Olympic Peninsula residents to plant 350 trees by Sunday.

They sent letters to area churches and put up posters urging families, clubs and businesses to report their planting plans at www.350.org/NOCCA or by phoning alliance member Ken Burres at 360-582-0893.

But by this week, only about a handful had made the pledge, Burres said.

Port Townsend

In Jefferson County, the story’s similar. The Port Townsend Food Co-op offered vouchers for 100 Douglas fir trees, donated by the Hood Canal Nurseries in Port Gamble, last Sunday.

Only about 60 people claimed a coupon, so co-op outreach manager Brwyn Griffin gave the rest to the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship to distribute this Sunday.

Tree planters are invited to the fellowship hall at 2333 San Juan Ave. in Port Townsend for services at 9:15 a.m. and 11:15 a.m.

Vouchers will be handed out after each, said Helen Kolff, chairwoman of Quimper’s Green Sanctuary Committee.

The congregation is having a work party of its own Sunday, Kolff said. “We’re just going to be planting a few trees on our grounds: some cedars and vine maples.”

Meanwhile, back in Clallam County, the tree-planting and -donating idea has spread, though not quite in time for the Global Work Party on 10-10-10.

Lazy J Tree Farm

Steve Johnson, owner of the Lazy J Tree Farm at 225 Gehrke Road — east of Port Angeles, off Old Olympic Highway — is inviting would-be planters to pick up a free noble fir next Saturday, Oct. 16.

That’s when he’ll have them ready to go; Johnson said people can stop by between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. for a free bare-root tree.

He’s giving the trees away because they’ve grown too big to sell as Christmas trees and would otherwise go into his compost heap.

“In my book, Steve’s the real hero here,” Diana Somerville, a Port Angeles journalist, said of Johnson.

“He’s trying to find good homes for trees that have grown too big . . . he wants to keep them alive instead of doing them in.”

Somerville, who often writes about environmental issues, is joining the Global Work Party this Sunday.

“For what it’s worth, I’m planting a tree . . . a little vine maple that I got from StreamFest,” the North Olympic Land Trust’s Aug. 29 festival at Port Angeles’ Ennis Arbor Farm.

As it turns out, Somerville and Kolff are part of one enormous Global Work Party.

The 350.org site this week counted 6,631 events in 188 countries, from a bicycle ride on the Jordan River through Tel Aviv to the solar-cooker-building workshop and children’s book exchange in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood.

At the Port Townsend Food Co-op, staffer Deborah Schumacher used her October newsletter article to urge her neighbors to join or form even more work parties.

“We can’t afford to throw up our hands now,” she writes. “There’s nothing to do but get to work.”

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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.