I grew up just outside of Washington D.C. in northern Virginia. Although I grew up just outside the city, I spent a large portion of my childhood kayaking, rock climbing, camping and biking around Virginia and the Adirondacks in New York, where we spent most of our vacations. These activities instilled in me a love for the outdoors and in the summer of my freshmen year I spent 3 weeks working at a state park in Southern Virginia for the Youth Conservation Corps. It was during this program that I learned about SCA and subsequently spent the next three summers participating in their high school trail crews (North Cascades Nat’l Park-2006, Kenia Fjords Nat’l Park-2007 and Manti la Sal Nat’l Forest-2008).
After graduating high school I went to James Madison University in Harrisonburg Virginia where I graduated this May (2012) with a bachelors in biology. But I was still not quite sick of SCA and during the summer of 2010 I took part in an internship in Sitka, Alaska mapping and controlling invasive plants in Sitka National Historical Park.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do now that I have graduated, but this internship is hopefully bringing me one step closer to finding out.
