Connecting with Land and People

“One morning we woke up early and drove to the highest point in the forest. It was a clear morning and we all sat on a ledge and watched the sun rise. It was so peaceful, quiet and intense.” This is Willy Zhang’s best memory from her SCA crew last summer in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest in Virginia.

This year was her second with the Conservation Leadership Corps and her crew this summer will be her second summer with SCA.
“SCA made me really in tune with my surroundings,” she said.

Willy is usually surrounded by San Francisco, where she lives, and even those familiar surroundings seemed different to her after coming back from her crew last summer.

“Right after the trip I went to Ocean Beach in San Francisco and enjoyed its natural beauty on a new level. I started to appreciate nature more, even in San Francisco.”

Coming from San Francisco, Willy has a strong appreciation for being in nature and loves to discover it with other urban teens.

“CLC was really cool. It’s cool that, you know, urban kids came to enjoy nature for a weekend. We were brought together by nature.”

Willy, and several other CLC students even got together after the program ended. They decided to go build some trails in Tilden Park. Not having all the necessary tools didn’t even stop them: they went to work with their bare hands! (Just kidding!). But they did go to Tilden Park to star gaze.

She also became close with the members of her crew last summer.
“Our group was diverse. Everyone was different: liberals, conservatives, people from urban areas and rural. You wouldn’t expect people to get along, but we did. I think working together made it easier to live together. We worked as a team to get the trail done, and then we applied that to living together.”

One of her fondest memories of the summer was every day after they finished their trail work, they would swim in a cool stream by their campsite. “It was like a Jacuzzi because the water rushed over the rocks so fast.”

Her crew last summer was backcountry and she loved it so much, she is doing a backcountry crew again this summer on the Appalachian National Scenic Trail in Massachusetts. Next year she will be a freshman at UCLA, in the large metropolis of Los Angeles. But I am pretty sure Willy’s connection with the land, even in LA, will remain strong.

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