1. What inspired you to pursue a career in environmental education—and what ultimately led you to join Baltimore Woods Nature Center?
From as far back as I can remember, I was an outside kid—playing in the woods, building forts with my friends, fishing, and looking for frogs. I stumbled upon environmental education somewhat by accident, not realizing that much of my work at summer camps was exactly that. I spent the summer before my junior year at college as the nature area director at Goose Pond Scout Reservation, teaching ecology and conservation-related merit badges and leading nature programs in the evenings. That’s when everything suddenly clicked for me that I could make a career out of sharing the wonders of nature with others. When I returned to school in the fall, I introduced myself to Andy Saunders, who taught natural history interpretation courses at SUNY-ESF, signed up for all of his classes, and discovered a great mentor.
One day after coming off a week-long guiding shift at a wilderness therapy school in Maine, I found a letter from Andy in my pile of mail telling me that there was an opening for a camp director at Baltimore Woods and he thought I’d be a great fit. Within two weeks I was hired and packed my car to return to Central New York. Over the last 18 years, I have found a wonderful community at Baltimore Woods that is rooted in a shared love of nature.
2. Describe your role as the program manager and camp director.
As camp director, my role is all about making sure we keep our promises to the hundreds of children and their families every year. They expect a wonderful experience full of discovery, hiking, friendships, and playing in the woods just like I did as a child. It takes a good deal of behind-the-scenes coordination, communication, database management, and health department paperwork. More importantly, it takes finding the right kinds of staff to lead the groups of campers on their daily adventures and making certain they have the training and resources they need to be successful.
As program manager, I coordinate with our education staff and special presenters to make sure we have a variety of educational and interpretive programming available to the community throughout the year. This includes everything from bird and flower walks for retired adults to big annual events, like our Earth Day Celebration in April and our Autumnal Fairy Festival in October. Like with my camp director role, making sure that our educators are fully supported is a big part of my job, and I find that quite rewarding. I enjoy helping them hone their ideas and creativity into polished presentations and coaching them as they grow in their profession.
3. What makes Baltimore Woods’ summer camps unique compared to others in the area?
Baltimore Woods’ summer camps are rooted in what’s known as ‘nature play.’ The idea that children who spend time outside, as much as possible, exploring and discovering at their own pace without too many adults telling them what they need to learn, reap manifold developmental benefits from building that close connection with the natural world. We did away with scheduled activity periods in favor of creating open-ended exploration and play opportunities throughout the 270-acre preserve.
Our campers spend their days hiking from one ‘camp spot’ to another, looking for salamanders and crayfish in the stream, building stick forts on Peanut Hill, finding frogs at the pond, having a cookout at Boulder Brook, getting covered in mud at the swamp, and chasing butterflies in the meadows.
Our counselors are all adults with a combined love of the outdoors and discovery. They are often schoolteachers who know how to manage groups of children, knowing when to engage and when to step back and let the kids be kids in the woods. Our camp is fairly simple and quite magical at the same time.
4. What is your favorite part of your role?
That’s a hard one, honestly! My role is so varied day to day with many moving parts and people to coordinate and support. I think, maybe, that’s it—the variety of tasks that require me to bring all of my own varied interests and skills to the work. I get real satisfaction from seeing a child find an insect under a log and start to piece together how it fits in the bigger picture of the forest. I love training and coaching our educational staff and seeing their own satisfaction when they help program participants build connections with nature, knowing that their hard work paid off. I’ve spent a long time in management roles, working behind the scenes to support the staff and the organization. I started out as an educator, a teacher, an interpreter of nature, and the days when I get to lead a walk or see a child’s eyes light up when they hold their first toad—those are the best days.
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