American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” My outdoor career path began in 1995, and continued throughout the decades. I’ve been privileged to have encountered some amazing influencers — folks who shared their gifts and sage advice while providing opportunities for me to forge my own land ethic and wilderness ethos through public service. So when I read the call for applicants to become volunteer ambassadors of the Sierra Club’s first Outdoors for All cohort, I jumped at the chance to give back. I am honored to join devoted colleagues in this significant mission holding ‘nature as a human right’ and valuing the deep sense of purpose our important work yields.
Residing within the Northern Lake Huron watershed on ancestral, traditional and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabek, the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi peoples, my work in the outdoors is motivated by the tireless and longstanding leadership of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians who exemplify the highest professional excellence of our region’s natural resources management. As a SIGMA VSS freelance park interpreter*, I help fill visitor service and public programming voids for state parks and state fish hatcheries, which lack year-round interpretive field staff. My signature programs include instructional ice fishing for audiences including blind and low-vision youth with Michigan’s Opportunities Unlimited for the Blind and guided forest bathing meanders on trails across northern Michigan.
My goal as a new volunteer and member is to further the Sierra Club’s footprint across the Tip of the Mitt, increasing access and inclusion by leading environmental literacy programs and story sharing for historically underserved and marginalized communities, and upholding civil rights and our American perseverance of equal opportunity.
* SIGMA VSS is a designation for registered freelance contract workers, such as park interpreters, naturalists and educators within Michigan parks systems.