Hi there, I’m Myrna Hayes, Founding President of the Mare Island Heritage Trust and the Co-founder and Director of the San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival. Will you make a donation of any amount to help us fund this coming year’s 30th Anniversary Go Wildly Live Outdoors San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival? Plan to attend February 13-15, 2026. We will also celebrate our Co-Founder's 70th birthday party!

More and more, since the life changing pandemic of 6 years ago and our dismissal as founding managers of the Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve, we have shifted the way we raise and receive funds for our non-profit organization's operations and educational programming. Yes, we are an IRS designated 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and a California Secretary of State registered non-profit corporation. Now, more than ever, we benefit from and really depend on your direct donations for our programming and operations. And, really, if you think about it, that makes sense. Rather than writing grant applications and as we can see, potentially getting tangled up in the uncertainly of the outcome of such sources of money even if it is awarded, why not simply come directly to you, our wildlands community participant? YOU are who we are founded to serve. Our mission as the Mare Island Heritage Trust, is to make public access available to you, on and near Mare Island wherever it is planned or already exists. We believe our job is to more than passively promote nearby wilderness(wild near us), but to engage with you in a most intimate and personal way so that you have the tools and the encouragement to embrace yourself as both human and wild. We believe that when you experience connection in a deepening way with wildness, that you will naturally align your life with your most human being. We are, after all, human beings, not human doings. When you go deep in nature, it's assured that you are your better and best, self.

Our San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival was founded by the San Francisco Bay Association(Save the Bay) which I was at the time, the Outreach and Education Coordinator for, and co-hosted by the US Navy beginning in January 1996 as the Navy was leaving Mare Island. The Navy believed that while it had a lot of environmental cleanup to conduct over the next decades, the agency felt it had been good stewards of Mare Island's natural and historic resources and wanted to gauge the public interest in those efforts. When more than 1,000 people came out for that first Flyway Festival held in a historic building on Mare Island for just 4 hours, we had our answer. We have never turned back and we have never wavered in our commitment to showcase in a real-time way, this unique and sacred land.

We hope you will stay with us on this exuberant journey in which we seek to guide you through a blend of wild times on the Pacific Flyway with the rich cultural, archeological, historic and scenic places that are packaged in one place on Mare Island and its vicinity. This land is the former Mare Island Naval Shipyard for a time of 142 years, followed by nearly 30 years of a new and evolving purpose, and reaching further back to times before our modern repurposing of a wild and sacred Island. We believe that you don't love who you don't know. And, we hope that you will get to know and fall wildly in love with this special place we think of collectively, as the North Shore of San Francisco Bay.

For the 2nd year, I have changed both the location of our gathering, offering it as a Flyway Festival PopUp at Moschetti Coffee Roasting in Vallejo and expanded our outings beyond the Festival weekend only, to 6 weeks of weekend and now, even weekday outings that I am personally hosting with guides who have particular specialties. Why have I shifted from what really worked for 25 years? Because, incredulously we find ourselves “competing” with our own original Flyway Festival format of a combination of our Family Wildlife Exploration and Birding Expo, featuring non-profit and agency exhibitors, commercial vendors and artists, presenters, live wildlife shows, an auction and art show. I assure you, this shocked me most of all!

Life is getting better and better at throwing us curve balls and a few other pitches. What do we do?! In my case…I swing WILDLY!!! And, it’s turning out to really be a winning game. I’ve personally guided and hosted outings throughout the North Shore of San Francisco Bay, taking video or Facebook Live posting on our Facebook pages to share our Go Wildly Live Outdoors outings to the widest possible audience. With close to 400,000 views in the last 28 days on our main Mare Island Facebook page, with Facebook expanding who sees our page due to this new style, we are reaching an audience with our Mare Island and nearby based posts than we could have ever dreamed of on our first Flyway Festival opening day in January 1996. Our followers have blossomed to 5,200 and growing each day. Yes, this is a novel way to commune with our wildlands community of believers who love our Mare Island and San Francisco Bay North Shore for many reasons. We call together all who love it’s wilderness(wild near us), it’s Naval and maritime history, it’s cultural history and it’s magnificent vistas, Openspace, and quirky features you’ll just never find in one complex anyplace else in the world. If you are a believer. If you believe with all your heart, if you are passionate about or even a little fond of Mare Island and it’s nearby special places, will you make a donation of any amount? We ARE all volunteer. But, our work is not free. From the fuel it takes to keep the Mare Island San Pablo Bay Trail open daily(for the last 16 years this December), to the costs of website development, technical equipment like the birdwatching scope and binoculars we were able to buy for our nonprofit education efforts, to many of the signs, banners and information displays for the Flyway Festival PopUp to the honorariums we gladly made to some of our expert birding guides, your contributions in the “offering plate”, help our wildlands community “church” to flourish. For your donation, I am most grateful.

Your donation to Mare Island Heritage Trust will truly make all the difference in our cultivating and nurturing of our wildlands community. And, we thank you. Our Flyway Festival website has contact information for our team. Visit San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival

photos: Bill George, 2025 Go Wildly Live Outdoors San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival Sunday morning boat trip with Dolphin Charters.