“So how did I wind up in New Hampshire of all places, working on maintaining hiking trails in a national forest? Some may say that I landed here out of necessity, but really this is what I have prayed for, even if it hasn’t looked the way that I thought it would.”

“I feel privileged to be able to spend so much time in the mountains, and I believe that all this time has deepened my love for the natural world and my passion for conserving it.”

“I’m sitting here now, with only a handful of peaks left, and feeling quite emotional about leaving. I’ll miss these terribly steep trails, the people I met while serving in the LRCC, and maybe even the composting toilets.”

“I’ve become a stronger leader than I ever have been before. I knew that whatever my experience with AmeriCorps would be like it would at the very least be rewarding, and I can honestly say rewarding is an understatement.”

“Not only is it difficult to briefly describe this position due to the wide range of duties we have, but all those duties have introduced me to so many new interests and hobbies that I like to think about myself from a different perspective than I used to.”

“Before moving to Holderness, I had not ventured into the Northeastern part of the United States (apart from my middle school band trip to NYC that is entirely too embarrassing to acknowledge as any event from my past). I am from South Carolina, and although I had heard tales of the land of “Yankees”, I didn’t know what to expect.”

“Eventually, all rolling stones will have to come to a stop and begin to gather moss. I’m not quite ready to stop rolling just yet, but it would be a lie to say I haven’t gathered some moss from this place.”

“I don’t think it was hard work alone that got me here, but it wasn’t just luck either. The reality of it is probably somewhere in between.”

“Before coming to the SLA, I could count on one hand the number of tools I had ever used.”

“When we’re stuck inside for so long, it’s easy to romanticize nature in every facet of our lives. We see how lush our forests are during late spring in photographs on Instagram, watch people jump from precipices into a cold lake on YouTube, and scroll through hundreds of posts on social media, the majority of which only deal with the best things our world has to offer.”