January 24th, 2022 | Hear more about Rodney Flora's experience with the Traditional Trades Apprenticeship Program.

January 20th, 2022 | The 18 people spending their day (or days, in some cases) with the trees included civilians from all walks of life, members of the Arizona and Nevada Conservation Corps, and a group of women who brought along two pack camels to help carry baby Joshua trees through some of the more treacherous terrain. Joshua trees typically have a lifespan of 150 years; if all goes according to plan, these saplings will become a fixture of the preserve for a long, long time.

January 20th, 2022 | Asheville native and Western Carolina University grad Stephanie Dillingham is spending her time post graduation in Highlands serving the Highlands Cashiers Land Trust maintaining trails and organizing educational efforts through AmeriCorps.

January 18th, 2022 | Working for a conservation nonprofit during the COVID-19 pandemic has shown me how much we are like water. Like water, our society has had to adapt to fill the container we put ourselves in. We are in the midst of a pandemic, so we adapt by changing how we work, and changing how we view work too. We have adopted better systems for showing up, doing what we can with the resources we have, and changing plans to keep ourselves and our volunteers safe.

January 3rd, 2022 | There are two dangers inherent in trimming brush, and at the moment I am confronting both of them. The first is physical fatigue, the strains and overuse injuries stemming from bending too much from the back, from swinging too much with the wrist. The second is tedium, a side effect of bending and sweeping for hours in silence with little more than a stiff breeze and the chance of autumn rain for company. The first I mitigate by bending from the knees, using my core, drinking water. For the second, I attempt to create meaning out of monotony. I reach out with the loppers, clip a beech limb, bend to collect it from the ground, toss it into the undergrowth. Reach, clip, bend, toss. The motions build upon each other like waves, or maybe better, like tree rings, or the seasons that etch them into the cross section of each young tree I cut.