Working on behalf of the Appalachian Trail, it is hard to not think about the importance and impact of change. As the Trail emerges from winter, the sounds of chainsaws fill the air as volunteers clear out the detritus of winter storms and winds — making sure the tread is clear for hikers. At the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC), we are hiring our seasonal staff and starting large-scale projects to support the Trail and the surrounding landscape. It is spring cleaning at its most intense.

Nominations are currently being accepted for candidates to succeed four retiring members of the ATC’s Board of Directors. The deadline to submit a nomination is June 19. If there is anyone you wish to nominate, or if you are interested in serving, we would like to know.

The slate of nominees will be announced on the ATC’s website in July. It will be voted on by the ATC’s membership in late summer/early fall.

n a golden October day, a dozen or so people headed off trail through an Appalachian forest. They climbed higher and higher, their boots crunching the leaf litter beneath them. Trees soared above their heads, many of them hardwoods, with leaves flashing amber and red.

Each person in the group had a different degree of familiarity with this section of woods, and a different amount of conservation experience. But they were united by what they carried in their hands — red spruce seedlings, none more than two feet tall — and their mission: to help restore the red spruce forest in the southern Appalachian Mountains.

A relic species of the last Ice Age that thrives in colder temperatures, the red spruce was once a mainstay of the eastern North American forest from the southern Appalachians to coastal Canada. However, in the 19th and early 20th centuries widespread logging cut its historic range in half. This made the remaining forests vulnerable to wildfires that burned with such intensity that they destroyed the very organic matter that spruce trees need for their seeds to sprout. In a warmer climate, red spruce in the southern Appalachians now exist mostly on the highest mountaintops, forming dark green “sky islands.” Further temperature increases will continue to stress the trees, making them more vulnerable to pests and wind disturbance events.

I am writing these words as I prepare to retire after 35 years with the National Park Service, including nearly 10 years as Superintendent of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail.

Fulfilling the National Park Service’s mission has been my life’s work. I have been honored to work at incredible parks with amazing stories and landscapes, with people who have made a lasting impact in both my life and the lives of others, and for an agency with colleagues who exemplify the very best of government service. My career has taken me to many places and provided me with unforgettable experiences. I have had so many opportunities to contribute, to improve the resource, to work with those who helped write our collective American history, and to encourage the youth who will lead our future.

In 1941, the Appalachian Trail Conference held its last meeting before the end of World War II. That final meeting was about preparing for war. Some of those involved in the conference were active-duty military and had been called to serve. During that time, my family was already in the war. By 1941, their shtetls and hometowns had been turned into ghettos or had been burned to the ground during the Nazi invasion of Poland. I often think about the parallels of that — how the planning of one of the greatest hiking trails in the world grounded to a halt during one of the darkest chapters of human history. 

But by 1948, the world was experiencing a profound sense of rebirth. That year, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, asserting that everyone has a right to freedom of movement and thought. In 1948, the Appalachian Trail Conference held its first meeting since the war to continue the work of the A.T. In 1948, a World War II veteran, Earl Shaffer, became the first A.T. thru- hiker — an attempt to “walk off the war.” That same year, in 1948, my dad was born in a displaced persons camp on the island of Cyprus to two Holocaust survivors — one of about 2,000 children born there to survivors fleeing Europe after the war.