Grassroots Main

	Faces Home
	Leaders by Name
	Leaders by State
	See All the Faces

	More Grassroots:
	Stories
	Scrapbook

Environmental news, green living tips, and ways to take action: Subscribe to the Sierra Club Insider!

Claudia Hilligoss

Murphys, California
Committee Member
Clair Tappaan Lodge

Claudia Hilligoss is accustomed to moving around. In a 25-year career with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Indiana native lived in Indianapolis, Tampa, Fort Wayne (Indiana), Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Palo Alto, California, before settling into small-town life in Union, Kentucky, just south of Cincinnati near the Ohio River.

There, the avid watercolorist and ceramicist became chair of the Sierra Club's Northern Kentucky Group. She also worked as a counselor to battered women. "It was hard," she reflects. "I wanted to take these women home with me."

While living in Palo Alto in the 1990s, Hilligoss started hiking with a group called Sierra Singleaires, and began leading service trips in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and California. "Leading outings was so rewarding," she says. "It was very healthy, very healing for me." In Kentucky, she continued leading service projects at Mammoth Cave National Park and Big Bone Lick State Park.

All the while, Hilligoss was building her own house, working as her own contractor. But when an opportunity arose to work for the Clair Tappaan Lodge, she jumped at it. "My first visit there was life-changing, to be in an area of such natural beauty. I just can�t shake it."

Hilligoss relocated to the Sierra Nevada to serve on the Clair Tappaan Lodge Committee, and is pursuing an advanced degree in psychology from the University of Nevada at Reno�specifically eco-psychology and the relationship of women to wilderness. "Outdoor experiences work wonders for our self-esteem and self-sufficiency," she says. "To spend time up among the alpine lakes, hiking, skiing, and spotting new wildflowers�it�s such a positive lifestyle."

Published: January 24, 2007