Leadership Rooted in the Ground, Community-Led Conservation, and Connection Across Landscape and People with Teresa Martinez

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Teresa Martinez, Executive Director and Co-founder of the Continental Divide Trail Coalition about Leadership Rooted in the Ground, Community-Led Conservation, and Connection Across Landscape and People.   Read her full bio below.

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Showtimes: 
2:35 - Hiking the Appalachian Trail
10:36 - Interview with Teresa Martinez Starts!
19:03 - Personal Goals in the Workplace
27:45 - Challenges of Community Input
42:49 - #FieldNotes with Teresa

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Guest Bio: 
Teresa Martinez is a co-founder and the Executive Director of the Continental Divide Trail Coalition, the lead national and lead partner working with the USFS, BLM, National Park Service, State Agencies, Indigenous Communities and Tribal Nations to cooperatively steward the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail. For over 30 years, Teresa has worked professionally to increase awareness, engagement, access, and stewardship of our entire National Trails System. A graduate of Virginia Tech, Teresa holds a B.S. and M.S from the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife in the College of Natural Resources. From 1987- 2007 she worked for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, from 2007 to 2012 she worked for the Continental Divide Trail Alliance and since 2012 she has been the Executive Director (and co-founder) of the Continental Divide Trail Coalition. Formerly a Board member, today she serves on the Trail Leadership Council of the Partnership for the National Trails System and has served as the Chair of the Federal Advisory Committee to aid the USFS in the development of the Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail. Teresa also serves on the Board of Directors for Leave No Trace and has also served on the advisory committee for the Salazar Center for North American Conservation. 

Teresa is actively involved in the creation of equitable spaces for all people in the outdoors and in 2015, was part of the inaugural group of conservation leaders assembling in Washington DC to launch a new vision for the next 100 years of stewardship of our nation’s parks, forests, waters, oceans, and trails which led to the formation of the Next 100 Coalition and the Next 100 Coalition Colorado. 

Today, Teresa serves as the Chair of the National Board for the Next 100 Coalition. In 2019, Teresa was honored by the Virginia Tech College of Natural Resources as the recipient of the Gerald Cross Alumni Leadership Award. When not working one of these heart driven endeavors, Teresa can be found perfecting her sourdough and puff pastry bakes, or spending her time exploring the mountains, mesas and arroyos of the landscapes around her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her rescue dog Riley and hosting discadas with friends while watching the sunrise and sunset over the beautiful terrain of the Land of Enc

Transcript

Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds, Nic and Laura. On today's episode, Nic and I talk about hiking trails. We interviewed Teresa Martinez about leadership rooted in the ground, community-led conservation, and connection across landscape and people. 

And finally, listen to the episode to hear more about the Continental Divide Trail. But here's some fun facts about the Appalachian Trail. It's the longest hiking only footpath in the world. I did not know that. The trail travels through 14 different states. It is also the largest and longest running volunteer conservation project in the world. What? That's awesome. That is awesome. I didn't know that. Yeah, and the elevation gain and loss of hiking the entire Appalachian Trail is the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest 16 times. Whoa, that's pretty cool. I love that why I've never done this. Yeah, that sounds tiring. Here's another fun fact and shameless plug. One of my authors is in his 70s and he and his brother hiked the Appalachian Trail in their 70s, in their 70s, in their 70s, and his brother's wife had died and He wanted to explore himself and the other one is a retired military veteran with PTSD and he's an alcoholic at the time, so he also wanted to just do something challenging and spoiler alert, he breaks his hip before he finishes at the end, um, but I think ends up finishing it. I can't remember. I can't, that part I do not know, you have to read it for yourself for the end, but it's a spiritual passage and it's an incredible story. But anyway, Appalle Trail, I have not hiked it but would love to. Not with the elevation change, I don't think though. EPR on the AT, that's what I'm hearing, uh.

Let's do it. Hit that music. 

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Let's get to our segment. I mean, I'm curious, have you ever hiked the Appalachian Trail or the CDC? Well, I mean, I grew up near it, so like I have hiked parts of it many times, but it's, and you know, I'm very biased to the south, well, central Virginia portions of it. And I think it's interesting how it changes state to state, and there's even parts of North Carolina where you're walking the trail and it's wide-open fields, you're not in a forest, and I, the first time I saw that I was kind of thrown. I was like, this isn't the Appalachian Trail. You know, it's not, it's not like where it is where I grew up. For those that do know, like I grew up nearish to the peaks of Otter, that's kind of like the landmark that we would go to, and there's like a hotel that had, at least at the time, didn't have any, it just had electricity, barely, didn't have internet like well into the 2000s, and I would assume it probably still doesn't. They didn't have TVs. It was very much a getaway from technology space and it was really cool and then there were like multiple trails. There's a short and a long one, but that shark top trail, which is the one I've done like a million times, and it's as a 5 year old, it's super easy. As a 35-year-old it is straight up. So it, it, it's very funny because it's, I remember I ran up that thing. I ran up and down that thing as a kid, as a teenager, as a young adult, and I remember going back in my thirties and like, oh, I love this trail. I'm gonna totally, I can't wait to get on back on it, and I'm like, you know, laboring, yeah, exactly, and it's like, nope, I just got old. So yeah, I have a really big fondness for it. I've never done the whole thing, you know, it's kind of Pretty sure it's scientifically proven that gravity gets harder as you get older. Yeah. I think that's very fair, but I don't know. I love that kind of thing. What about you? Have you, have you ever been on it? No, I don't think so. I've really been to North Carolina and all parts, Rocky Mountains, but I have never, like, I don't remember ever being, and I've never done it even on purpose for sure. I've hiked to other places. I've done multi-day hikes, but I've never done anything there. Yeah, you know, it's, I've never really done a multi-day hike, honestly. I mean, I've done like camping for multiple days. But I've never like completely different situation, yeah, of course it is. Yeah, not that I wouldn't, wouldn't want to do it. It's just like for it was kind of like I could do this, go do a hike and go home, right? Like why would I. Wanna go further away. I don't have to do that. Yeah, it's an experience. I, I really wish I had all my gear still and could do it again. I probably, I don't know if I'll ever do it again just because you need gear and other people to do it with. It's not something you could or should do by yourself. I mean, I guess you could, but you shouldn't. 

And we had, let's it's sort of like a group of people that we would go with a couple other couples and different friends and I went a bunch of times in Florida, North Florida, especially Georgia. I've been to, um, the Olympic National Forest in Washington. That was very cool, yeah, it was really amazing. I mentioned it in the interview that the parking lot was washed out, and this is the type of hike you have to tell, you stop at the ranger station and tell them that you're doing the hike. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, and I think they told us that it was washed out, so we, and you'd have an extra 5 miles on each end of your hike, so. Planning for 40 and ended up with 50. OK, fine, we'll, we'll do it. That's why you check in with rangers though. That's exactly why. Well, it is, however, we, so we park, then, you know, we head out on our adventure and It was hard, completely worth it, but it was hard. There's a point where you're doing a multi-day hike where you get beyond day hikers, and it's amazing. You get beyond the point where people are walking and coming back, and then it's just you and a few other of the people who are out there out doing multi-day hikes, and you get to see more and hear more, and it's so quiet and peaceful, and we saw elk, like my first herd of elk or whatever you call them. Crossing a river. I thought that it was like, I mean, where we were going was called the Enchanted Valley, but it was magical. It was like Lord of the Rings. They looked bigger than life. It was awesome. They are huge. And, and yeah, so it was very cool. And then one of the funniest moments was like we're hiking the trail and this pheasant just. 

Hops out of the grass next to us and we're like, and uh my, my friend and I were at the front of the, the pack and guys were kind of in the back and her and I were in the front and this thing jumped out of us and we almost came out of our skin. Yeah, oh, for sure, and uh, and it's, it's funny, you know, we talked about bears a lot in the episode, but like, um, I had a friend of mine hiking the PCT, the Pacific Coast Trail, and he came around the corner and saw a mountain lion just in the trail. And you know, he did the same thing that you do for a bear. He got big and he yelled and he did the thing and he said that, that, that mountain lion looked at him like, I could kill you if I wanted to, and then just walked away, like turned around and was like, well, later. Better things to do right now. Yeah, but then we came back, we're like, on the way back, we're dirty, we stink, we're like, OK, we're gonna get food, where, where are we gonna go eat? We're fantasizing about all how amazing it is gonna take a shower, and then we get to the car and it had been robbed. They have stolen all of our stuff out of the car, cut the gas line even, and siphoned all the gas out. We had enough gas to get back to the ranger station, and then they tell us, oh, there's been a rash of car robberies. There's a meth problem in the local town, and, um, oh no, thank you for information that would have been helpful yesterday. Oh man, you know, they didn't tell us when we got there, like, you might not want to lock your stuff in the car, you might wanna buy a locker, you might wanna whatever, they just let us go and Oh, that's brutal. So that, that was a brutal moment in trying to like hold your tongue, right, right. Like I talked to you yesterday. I talked to you yesterday. I mean it was 4 days, but you know, the movie is yesterday, but still, like they knew and they didn't tell us, you know, like told us where to park but not give us any warnings. So and even at the parking spot, like normally, you know, you go somewhere and there's like a sign that says there's been a lot of robberies lately, like, mind your stuff, like there was nothing. Yeah, so anyway, it was an amazing hike, but, and even now that that part of it was like, wah wah, I know, right? Maybe they just wanted you to have a really good hike, you know, they didn't want to tell you. 

That's why, yeah, we had to, I think, I don't know how we even, I think we duct taped the gas line and put, I don't know what we did, we ended up somehow getting to a Target and buying clothes like wow. Yeah, what an experience that is too. That's a life thing, you know, that's like a big life moment. But whether you're on the trail or coming off the trail, like that multi-day hiking and stuff is a great experience and problem solving and sharing because, you know, you've got to siphon your own water. You can't just drink water or carry enough water with you. You have to take a filter and find a Water source that's not full of mud and then, you know, share your food, share with your friends, like, if you run out of something, you've gotta borrow. A friend of mine, my friend also burned my socks, so in the fire. Yeah, oh, I think we've all been there. I'm not, my feet aren't too close to the fire really because they're melting. Oh, she was drying them. I think they were wet from something and just dried them a little too much. That's funny. That's very funny. Yeah, I've definitely been there. I mean, like I've done like my main experience with like multi-day hiking is actually not really that, it's a multi-day camping across the country, you know, so it's, you, you go to a place, you find a campground, you camp for the night, and then you go to the next place, camp for the night. And there's like a real odd joy in not knowing where you're going to end up, just knowing that it's going to be somewhere, and that's pretty cool. That's like really fun for me and I've done that a couple of times, but yeah, there's maybe a third trip in my mind that I'd like to take as well. So yeah, that's trail love. What a great way to end and get to our interview. How about that? It's great. 

Welcome back to EPR. Today we have Teresa Martinez with us. Teresa is the executive director and co-founder of the Continental Divide Trail Coalition. Sounds amazing. Teresa, great to have you here. Great to be here. You mentioned that being executive director was never on your radar. So with your degrees in fisheries and wildlife and deep conservation background, what path had you pictured for yourself? Not executive director, um. Well, you know, I've always been a, I've always been a hard worker. I've always liked to have my hands on the ground of whatever the thing is, right? So, my background is, I have an undergraduate from, and a master's degree from Virginia Tech's College of Natural Resources. Yeah, go Hokies. I mean, everyone out there still very Hokey proud. Um, and I, uh, use, while I was in college, I discovered the Appalachian Trail, had never heard of it. It happened my first weekend of school, and I fell in love with long trails immediately, just because of what they represented. And I realized instead of studying, I always wanted to study, sort of, birds of prey and raptors. But I discovered that by stewarding a trail like the Appalachian Trail, which is where I started my career, I, um, could actually affect raptors, people, critters, all kinds of critters, plus the Land and get to really know community. And, so, I, I loved being rooted in the on the ground work of trail stewardship. So, whether it's laying out trail, designing trail, or building trail, or teaching volunteers how to build trail, that's always been my roots. And so, I always wanted to stay as low to that, or as, as, as down to that as that level as possible. And, and, um, you know, at times, you always see leaders, and They're always sort of struggling, and you're like, I don't want that. I don't. Struggle. I just want to do the work. And so, when the world shifted for me and I moved to work with the Continental Divide Trail at the time, Alliance, it closed its doors. 

Myself and the other three co-founders, we all just sort of realized we were faced with an opportunity to be the leaders we, we wanted to have. So, you know, that whole sort of leadership challenge of being the leader you expect in others. And so, we sort of decided to do that. And I think We went into it. I know I've gone into it always with like a humility, a humbleness of just like, you know, when you're young, you think, well, I'm queen of the world, these are all the things I'm gonna do, and then all of a sudden you're queen of your world, and you're like, oh gosh, I actually have to do those things now because that's what I promised myself, right? And so here we are, and it turns out that the thing I, I least wanted to be is, is something that I'm, I'm finding a lot of joy in being, and I hope I'm good at it. I feel like I'm, I'm, I have aptitude for it, you know, I feel like we've grown an amazing organization with a team. That's fascinating. And in fact, we have a, we went, we started at my dining room table, and I'll volunteer for the 1st 2 years, and we now have 22 employees and a senior leadership team. It's insane. Um, amazing. Congratulations. And, and in the last 2 years, I've started to be in a space of delegating out, you know, where it was initially just me, and then we grew this like concentric circles of team, and, and now we have, we have departments. Yes. Bizarre. And, um, as we delegate, and I know less of the day to day, I mean, I still know everything that's going on, but I'm not in the day to day as much. I'm sort of up in the visionary, long-term vision, like, looking forward. How do we keep this organization being vibrant. We had a senior leadership team meeting this, this year, and we talked about what does leadership mean? 

And there's like 11 factors that, that typically come up in leadership. And we each, each of us sort of decided there's 5 of us on our senior team, and we each took the list and ranked them. And all of the other senior team members linked, uh, you know, we all talked about communication, and I can't remember the other one that were like our, all of our top 2s in some form or fashion. And then I had delegation really high, and they all had decision making for really high. And I was like, well, that's fascinating. I want you to make decisions, and you all want me to make decisions. But, you know, that's interesting. Looking up, looking down, and I was like, that's fascinating. Um, and so, I'm learning in this role that, you know, I think my grounding in being somebody who does the work has definitely influenced the way I lead, thinking about how do I support the people that were like me doing the work, so they have the resources and tools just to do the work and not have to worry about all the stuff that I worry about. Which is not always the case, and especially in nonprofits, you end up with a lot of stressors around salary or budgets, and we try to, everybody's informed of that stuff, but we, our team is always working at minimizing that concern, so you can just focus on the work and not the rest of the world. And so, yeah, I never wanted to be in this role, but it turns out that all of my, my work experiences. Shaped me for this role in very unexpected and beautiful ways, I guess. That's awesome. 

I love that we could stay the whole hour talking about leadership and what you learned from this experience. So we'll try not to keep you here too long, but I do want to touch on that. I think the difference between, I'll take the direction and I'll give it to someone else is huge, you know, as a thought process of, of what is my responsibility as a leader. And it may even touch on what you talked about when you thought about early on, I don't want to be a leader cause I don't want all that responsibility, but there comes a time where maybe you don't have to take on all the responsibility you share it with everyone else. Yeah. Yeah, and I think, I, you know, I think that's something that's really fascinating. I have never had a leadership coaching just till this last year. And I actually have, you know, I've been doing this work for 38 years, and I now have a leadership coach. It's great, you know, I'm a late bloomer, if nothing else. Um, and it's been really fascinating for me to look back at, at that very thought of, like, what does that mean? And, and how does that fuel me? Like, it, and maybe it's just who I am as a human being. I am much, I love it when other people can discover that they have these strengths and talents that they didn't know they had the capacity to do. And I, I think there's always a tension. When you have leadership structure that's very hierarchical, That it's like, you always look to that leader. I mean, that's what I grew up in, right? Is they will tell me what to do and I will do that. And instead, it's like, I tell, we try to build a culture at CDTC of like, what would you like to do and how can we help you? Tell me how I can help you be who you want to be. And even if it's completely out of the box, let's talk about it anyways.

 And I think that's, for me, a flex, so to speak, of the leadership muscle that has been so much fun to explore because that isn't what I grew up in. And I think for staff who are very, or the team we have, I won't say they're, we all struggle with that standard way of, like, staff and, you know, the us and them. It's like, we always say, like, there's no third person omnipotent person making decisions in our organization. It's a we. We're always informing each other, and we're all a part of decisions. Like, I may ultimately have to make decisions, but they're informed by the people they're affecting, which is All of us, cause we're all on the same team. And, and so, I think it's a fascinating thing to reimagine what leadership can look like, and then try to, to sort of strip away people from their expectations of what they think leadership is, cause we've all grown up in the same traditional systems. But when that begins to flourish, it's, it's just amazing how much more you can do and accomplish. And while Not also overburdening people with too much bandwidth either. Like, we tell people all the time, like, we go deeper, not wider. Like, say no. Say no to a lot of things so that what we do, we do really well, and we get to have fun doing it. And you leave space for the creative stuff of, you know, when you max out your work plan for the year, and you have whatever many hours to allocate out, leave. Some room for the unknowns that are going to always present themselves in this work, so you can do them. And you're not like, how do I fit that into my already packed schedule, versus like, oh, you know, I actually do have some bandwidth to take that on. 

Cause, at least in our world of being a nonprofit in the environmental conservation space, you know, it's a lot. Yeah. I love that for me when I experienced that in an organization I worked in where we're working on upgrading annual reviews and the suggestion was made to allow people to talk about their personal goals and they were like, no, those are two separate things and That to me was a scarcity mindset. We don't, we can't train you up, we can't allow you to learn new things because you might leave, or how dare you learn how to do something personal on our work time because you might then take skills you learned here and take them somewhere else, and um I felt that that was such a stifling and horrible mindset. So, I love what you're talking about. That is something we talk about all the time, like, instead of the scarcity mindset, that abundance, that reciprocity, that redistribution, that, that mindset of, like, we tell, say this to, I say, we say this all the time and we put in it, we call it the practice of the practice, right? You can talk about it all you want, but you actually have to do it, and then when you do it, You learn a lot along the way. So, it's a practice of a practice. And so, we always say, if you're here with us for 8 hours or 8 years, we want you to leave the best you can be, because then that just represents all of us well, right? And so, it's not about, it's about lifting everybody up and wanting everyone to thrive. So, it's not just an existence, it's a thriving.

Thriving space of discovering, you know what, actually this isn't for me, or, oh my gosh, this is my most amazing thing ever. I can't believe, can I also do blah blah blah, you know, and so, I think that allows for a lot of innovation and reimagination of a space that needs innovation and reimagination, so desperately. Yeah. Well, before I go start grabbing an application, let's talk about the work you actually do. So, you know, you talked about working with long distance trails and Appalachian Trail. Do you work with other trails? What kind of work are you doing? What are all these wonderful employees you now have up to? Yeah, so, you know, I started my career with the Appalachian Trail as a, as an assistant regional rep, but I was at ATC uh for roughly 20 years in the Central and Southwest Virginia Regional office, and then I moved to work with the Continental Divide Trail here in the Rocky Mountain West. And for those folks who don't know, National Scenic Trails are part of the National Trail System for the United States. 

So, the congressionally designated trails that have two purposes. One is to protect the nationally significant scenic, cultural and historic features of the landscape, and then two, to provide access to the American public for them. So, or anybody, I shouldn't say just the American public, anybody to experience them. And so, there's two types of trails. There's scenic trails, like the Appalachian Trail, many people have heard of, or the Pacific Crest Trail, or our trail, now, the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail, and there's historic. Trails that tell the historical story and may also be physical things on the ground, like the Oregon, California, you can walk in the ruts of the wagons. So, there's these two types of trails. We're a scenic trail, and now I'm with, and have been almost for 20 years, working on the cooperative stewardship of the Continental Divide Trail, which is a 3100 mile long trail that runs from Mexico to Canada along the Continental Divide, which is the major watershed of the North American continent. It provides water to over 80 million people. is a historical significant feature for people since time immemorial, in particular indigenous communities, tribal nations, and sovereigns, as well as land grant communities, and it tells the history of this landscape of the continental divide, I'd like to say from time immemorial, but also as an invitation to understand our place in The North American continent where water flows to the Atlantic and Pacific watersheds, which is a continental divide, as well as the Arctic Ocean in one place up near a glacier. And so, our work is to connect communities, landscapes, and cultures across this landscape that is congressionally designated. And that shows up in so many ways. 

Traditionally, it's in providing an access point for through hikers who like to try to attempt to hike the whole thing in one year, which is crazy, but they do it. It's for stewardship and building the trail with volunteers and other youth corps and creating opportunities for stewardship of our congressionally designated resources, and then it's also around telling stories and sharing stories of people who've been connected to this place since time immemorial, and what does the land mean to us, and I always like to share that the work we do is centered around that every drop of water that emerges from the ground on the continental divide will flow out, and then eventually around the planet until it comes back home. And so, in many ways, our work is centered on how do we think about how we're all connected in this larger landscape that is profoundly important to every single facet of our life, because it's water, it's about water, and then it's about animals, and it's about people, and spiritual connection and cultural significance. And so, our work is multifaceted. The other cool part about the CDT, unlike the AT, is that the trail isn't completed yet. So, we're also still working on strengthening community relationships to help complete the trail. And that includes a lot of really cool relationships. And so, in many ways, our work is still on the ground because we're, it's all about relationship. ships and finding ways to share stories that lead towards stewardship and protection of these nationally significant resources along the trail. So, some days I'm in Congress working with congressional, you know, representatives, and other days, I'm cooking for our trail crews. Uh, they're on the ground. Um, and then other days, we're out walking trail looking for routes and You know, being scared by bears. So, it's all, you know, it's like the coolest job on the planet. 

I'm not gonna lie. Sounds amazing. It really does. So, you mentioned you have to work with different partners like federal agencies, states, tribal nations, and local communities. I'm sure you have teams of people working on this, but how do you bring all them together to make the decisions that need to be made? Yeah, we, we see ourselves as conveners more than decision makers, and I think we recognize, you know, trials have existed. Way before Congress designated them with the National Trail System in 1978, critters, you know, little animals to people who have been using trails since time immemorial. So, I think what we recognize is we have an opportunity to bring all of those kinds of things together. So, whether it's tribal nations who may be using segments of the CDT and or the CDT is on segments that they have used since time immemorial. I should say, or looking at migration corridors, so areas that are significant to wildlife conservation components. We just bring people together and we try to help people learn and listen together, and then we can share what we know about stewardship of the National Scenic Trail. But provide a lot of space for people to get to know each other and then find common ground and decide how to move that forward. 

So, I wish I could say there was a magic formula, but honestly, it's just relationships and listening and learning and being humble and then providing resources to Implement whatever comes out of that. So, sometimes that looks like creating kiosks that tell stories differently at trailheads for the CDT so that we're always moving towards something tangible, but it's, they take very unique shapes and then are formed very differently than maybe traditionally might have happened in the past. So, I, I don't know if that answers your question, but I would say we're conveners and we listen. And we try to also understand everybody who's interested about a place. Again, the CDT is unique in that people have had connection to this place since time immemorial, so there's so many more people than in the traditional national trails community. Um, it could be rural communities, it can be ranching communities, it can be indigenous nations, or tribal nations, indigenous people, land grant communities, scientists, you name it, and so, The communities and convening we do is very diverse and sometimes takes a really long time. It's not like we have a meeting and like, we solve the problem. It's more like 10 years later, we're still talking about these relationships and drinking a lot of coffee, and getting to know one another, and then usually it's something like, we've, we're in meetings a lot and out on the landscape a lot, and then All of a sudden we all kind of go like, huh, why aren't we doing that? That's the answer. It just takes time and so we spend a lot of time, I think, creating time to do the relationship building that needs to be done. So when you have like different interests, you know, I'm sure the groups have different interests and different wants and different needs, and you have to balance all of those things together. 

So, you talk about how long those relationships are and they'll continue long after we're all gone, I'm sure, but how do you listen to the community. And find that balance because it's such a hard thing to do is, especially if you're trying to, you know, establish a new trail and you want to do it in a respectful and, and thoughtful way, but you also want to get the trail completed and you need to do that and you have to, you have to go do that at some point and, you know, someone might not be happy about that. So how do you navigate that challenge because that's not an easy thing to do like you mentioned. Yeah, I think we're still figuring that out. I think that's the answer. I'll give an example. So we, we recently started, we also discovered, so we always apply a scientific approach to the work. So we're always trying to look at like, what is, you know, we're not just all emotional, like, we definitely want to base our, our work in understanding science of the landscape and what, you know, where are migration corridors. And recently we discovered that the continental Divide landscape has some of the darkest skies on the North American continent, and we're like, huh, well, that's fascinating. That is really interesting, and there's a lot of dark sky communities and dark sky enthusiasts who are very interested in the, the Continental Divide Chi corridor for that reason, and we have actually a lot of um through hikers that they talk about the importance of. The Milky Way. And then, as we were talking with communities and some of, we have a gateway community program where communities can designate themselves, they go through a designation process on their own, sort of, we support them, but they let us know they want to do it. Um, so, we have 23 communities we work with up and down the trail, and a lot of them have also talked about, like, the importance of dark skies around their communities and have dark sky gatherings and other things. And we were like, oh, that's fascinating. And What is that? I'm like, like, oh my gosh, can we start looking up, not just down, but if we look up? Oh my gosh, if we look up, all of a sudden. 

We have a whole different population of people we could be pulling into these conversations that we never even knew existed. And as we've been doing this work for the last 2 years, we also started partnering with the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, which is a totally organization, faith-based organization that represents over 400 faith-based institutions and organizations that are very diverse. You name it, they're a member of this other organization. And now all of a sudden, we've got the faith-based community, which turns out a lot of rural communities along the continental divide are centered in faith-based institutions and like local churches. That's the hub of the community. And so we're starting to find all these alignments, and then we start talking to a lot of folks who live in the rural west, and they say the same thing. You know, maybe on one side, they may be on one side of the fence, so to speak, but they can talk about the importance of walking out their backyards and seeing the Milky Way, and they want their children to see the Milky Way. And so all of a sudden, we're like, hey, wait a minute, we have way more things that are, we are aligning with than might on paper look like we Don't agree with. And so we had to change our language to say like, how do we show up and represent all of the people along the landscape. Who actually care about dark skies that are also aligned with the continental Light trail, and we're like, wow, that is, we're so we're in the middle of trying to understand what that means, but I think it's looking at the trail not as just something that is we hike, but is something that is an important component and fab uh part of the fabric of a community way beyond just a recreational resource that it has. These spiritual components, and that's not even talking about indigenous importance of indigenous community or tribal nation connection to the, the, the cosmos, so to speak. 

There's all these different ways we can come together, and I would say that what we're learning is we don't have to have the answer, but we do need to bring people together to let them discover their own, and that's something that we can do is provide resource and Facility to convene people, to let them solve their own problems, or I don't want to say it like that, to help them find their own solutions to whatever they're facing in their community, right, which they're all facing, keeping kids healthy, getting resources, finding ways to thrive in an environment where economic sustainability for small rural towns is not always a guaranteed. So, letting them find those solutions and I think that's the piece that I would say is the answer we have found is we don't have to have the answer. We just need to listen and then bring people together and communities already, they already know what's going to work in their communities. We don't have to tell them. We can just provide them resources to implement what they already know how to do. That's a really good segue to something I wanted to ask you about. Like, you've led major equity efforts like the Next 100 Coalition, like some of our listeners may not be familiar with that, so I'd like to know what the Next 100 coalition is and how that ties into what we were just talking about. Yeah, so I don't know if folks will see this on video, but I'm a Hispanic woman. Mhm. I've been doing this work for 38 years. And when I first started out, I was definitely the only brown person, much less brown woman, that was in this field. And so, in many ways, it was very isolating, but also very beautiful. Like, I worked for the Appalachian Trail for 20 years, and Never once ever felt I was different. 

I was always part of the team, and it was a beautiful place and very place where, you know, my, my mentors always encouraged me to be, be more than I even knew I could be. So, I've, I've only had good experiences, but that's not true for everybody. And in 2015, a group of people like me were assembled in Washington DC. At the behest of Audrey Peterman and Frank Peterman, who were leaders in the conservation space in terms of being African American and, and very, very much promoters of the national parks and wilderness and such. And so they convened about 50 folks like me in Washington DC to sort of think tank, what would the next 100 years in the national park system look like at the anniversary of the 100 years of the National Park Service. And we all decided it wasn't just about National Park. It was all of our nation's parks, lands, forests, waters, that we had an opportunity that if America was going to look different than it had in the past, how do we ensure that the communities that we come from aren't left out of the conversation and in fact, leading for our community so that our voices were leading our communities. We weren't letting our communities be led by other people using our voice. And so, over a couple of years, it took some time to get organized. We realized we had the opportunity to do that. And we, um, a small subset of us, maybe because I'd already helped build one nonprofit, I was like, ah, let's do another one, why not, um. I have that skill now. I can do this. And there was about 12 of us who formed the Next 100 coalition to represent our communities where we come from, LGBTQ+, black, brown, indigenous, to ensure that our voices are part of the public land system and helping shape the next 100 years of our nation's forest parks and trails, and Now, there's an executive director and a small team that works to help ensure those voices are at the table through doing things like helping people gain skills to be on wildlife commissions, to actually helping provide public policy suggestions for federal agencies, so that there's a whole gamut of work there, and I think that ties in in that one thing that is really important for any community, whether it's rural, urban, black, brown, indigenous, is that We know our communities and we know what works for our communities because we come from them. And so when you talk about what does community-led conservation look like, a lot of times communities already have the answers. 

They need the resources, and oftentimes they don't have access to resources, meaning money, skill, to do the thing they know will work in their communities. And oftentimes, other organizations come in and tell people, this is what you should do, you know, and that doesn't work because Sure, they get money and resources, but not for the things that actually are going to be successful in rural communities specifically for the CDT or other types of communities. And so, I think how that aligns and what I've learned in the last 10 years now of Next 100 work is how To help support communities lead themselves and lift them up to do the work they already know how to do with the resources that will help them be successful, and then embed that into their cultures as a community. And I think that's the hardest thing for the conservation community to do is to get out of the way. Yeah, yeah, that's very fair. Best intentions, best intentions, of course, because it's uh there's like a balance between being an expert and having an open mind and sometimes those, those should go hand in hand, but sometimes they don't because as you become an expert, you get your field of vision narrows. Well, I know that because I've done it this way for so long, right? Yeah, but it's that whole thing if we keep throwing the same money at the same solutions and they end up with the same results, then something's got to change, right? And it's not to say that that's wrong and I've learned this a lot in working with tribal nations and indigenous people is that it's not a this or that, it's a how do we share common knowledge, you know, this idea around when you bring in um traditional ecological knowledge into what the science we've created in the non-native world, all of a sudden we have this broader aperture to sort of understand a landscape. 

And so the goal isn't one or the other, it's both. So, how do we bring it together and create a bigger soup or stew, maybe it's, in New Mexico, I'd use like a really rich New Mexican chili, you know, green chili stew, and have it represent all of these flavors, and, and then it just becomes something bigger, because it's always going to be bigger than the sum of input. Yeah, and it's like, it's, it's so funny you talk about food from New Mexico, and I went sopapilas came right to my mind, and yeah. Which is, uh, OK, now I'm hungry, uh, but so I love that we, we, we spent a lot of good time talking about organizations and how you work with communities for people who are going on the trail, who are using the trails, what advice would you have for people for their experience to be safer, more meaningful, and more responsible, you know, sometimes I know this happens where people are like, oh, I've hiked before, now I'll just do 3000 miles, why not? And there's no training, there's no practice, there's no nothing, but what's some of that advice you would give people who are interested in hiking the trail, even for just a shorter period of time or for a long one? I say do it. Um, so don't get intimidated. We, it's funny, people think about the continental divide, and it is. There are definitely parts of the landscape that are above 10,000 ft, but you also could be in a high elevation desert. You can also be with animals that have, that, you know, potentially could eat you, not gonna lie, um. Grizzly bears are big, um, uh, but they're not, I think that's more about understanding that there's a humility in coming. And so, I encourage people to do some good reading. 

There's a lot of on our website, Continental By Trail, or it's uh CDT coalition.org. We have all sorts of free resources, maps, access to planning guides and resources that people can read up. I encourage people to look at, um, there's so many folks who've hiked the trail, who have. YouTube channels, and that point of view is so great because you can kind of see the trail through other people's experiences, and maybe there's something that relates to your background directly. And then, there's organizations like American Long Distance Hiking Association West that holds things called RCs annually, where they kind of do a one-day primer on long-distance hiking, especially for these, um, some of the long trails in the west that do have these really significant, you know, challenges. We always Talk about the CDT. You go from desert to glacier along the trail. You literally, if you go north to south, you start in a desert and you end in a glacier, or vice versa. You start in a glacier, you end up in a desert. But the desert, you know, I always tell people, it is very much like the Bugs Bunny cartoon, like, oh, I should have taken a left at Albuquerque, but it's only because, only because in the Chihuahuan Desert, it is actually a high elevation desert. It's 4700 ft, um, at times. So it's not low. So that in itself adds a whole thing, but it's relatively flat, but flat also means you're walking up and down Arroyos, so it's also very modulating, and so it's not what people expect. So, doing some research on the landscape, but all of that is just to, so that you can make good decisions while you're out there, not necessarily because it's impossible to do. I know I will always put my money on somebody who's never hiked before, who's done some research and is planning to start out with 10 miles a day. Then somebody who's done every trail on the planet and comes out and thinks they're gonna do 30s on the first day, they will never make it. They never make it. Because I think when you show up on land with a humility and sort of an understanding, there's, you're way better at succeeding than if you think, you know, at all similar. 

I think we learned, we learned a lot that, a lot of that in our work too is coming in with sort of some, not trying to be the experts. But, um, having said that, you know, it doesn't hurt either to go. Do some walking and practice and get your kit dialed and minimize some of the weight in people's packs, but also tennis shoes will work. Like, we run into, again, people have been using these trails since time immemorial without all the fancy $5000 worth of gear. So, you know, there's something to that. So, I think the most important thing is for people to test it out, and then decide if they like it. Yeah, do some research and figure out how to challenge yourself to start with an hour, go to a day, go to an overnight, go to a week, and then maybe try to go for a long distance through hike. So, Uh, and there's so many beautiful pieces. I'll tell you a funny story. We, um, many years ago had a gentleman who was in his 70s who was doing a section hike up the CDT estate every year, and he had enlisted the help of a Sherpa from, um, Nepal. And Pem, his name was Pem Sherpa, and One day I asked Pam, you know, what was harder, and Pam had summited Everest several times, and I asked Pam what was harder, Mount Everest or the Continental Divide Trail? And he said, oh, the Continental Divide Trail for sure. And I was like, what? And he's like, yeah, on Everest, every single footstep is calculated. Like, you know where you're going to put your feet every step of the way. On the CDT, every step on the CDT is a decision. And it takes in all this information, and you could get it wrong at any given moment. And so, I thought that's, that was fascinating to me that it, it was a mental difficulty, not a necessarily a physical one. So, I think, I think if people come with that understanding, they'll be just fine. Yeah, that's amazing. That's a really great advice. Having done just a couple of multi-day hikes, nothing long distance like that, I think 50 miles was the longest I did. It is a lot of mindset, for sure, especially when you get into, like, the one I did, we started 10 miles out because of washed out road, and so just the first day was more miles than we expected. And uh like you said, if you're not flexible and ready for anything. You're probably not gonna get through, but um, we are at a segment of our show called Feel notes. This is a part of our show where we talk to our guests about memorable moments doing the work and the type of work you do, you must have tons of things. 

So, I'll give you a second to process, but we ask people to send their funny, scary, awkward field stories with us. They don't have to be all those things at one time. So, we can read them on future episodes. This is just something that connects all of us as environmental professionals. We typically have something, whether it's outdoors, in a boardroom, something that we're doing, where there's a memorable moment. But you mentioned to Marley that you had a trip on the Acoli River, am I saying that right? The Chillic up to the Arctic, yeah, and I think this is classic. Maybe this even goes to your story, Nic, uh, or your question. A couple of years ago, I had a colleague through the Next 100 Coalition on japena called me one day and said, hey, do you want to go to the Arctic? And I was like, uh, yeah, sign me up. Like, I don't even know what we're doing, but yes, sign me up. And then he called me back. He's like, OK, we're in. I was like, OK, what are we doing? Um, OK, cool. But what are we doing? And he said, well, we're gonna go with the Sierra Club. And we ended up going with Angel Pena from Nuesta Tierra Conservation Project, Dwayne Williams from Outdoor Afro, and then Lenn Nescifer from Natives Outdoors. So, we were all going to sort of go to the, the Arctic to sort of talk about, to one, gain experience in the Arctic, just so that we could help keep the Arctic free from drilling, right? So, it was gonna to be a 10-day float on the Ichili River. And I, you know, you, you just kind of go like, well, OK, they can't kill us, right? Just say yes. And all we, all I had to do is get myself to Fairbanks. So I was like, I can do that. I can buy plane tickets. So, we all end up in Fairbanks, and we go, it's right around the solstice, it's 24-hour sun, which was also amazing and just absolutely amazing. And then they, this is the part where I was like, I should have asked better questions. So, I just assumed, I don't know what I was thinking, but we, you know, we start out, we, we go with an outfitter called Arctic Wild, and then we had two guides and a couple of other folks from the Sierra Club. We go to the guide station, you know, their place, and we pack up all our stuff, and, um, they put us on a Plane with 9 people, and then they put us on a bush plane with only 2 people at a time, and they're doing laps, and they literally just drive it, fly us out over the Brooks Range into the Arctic and just drop us off on a riverbank, cause that's how it works. And then they're like, see you, see you in 10 days, you know, like, wait a minute. And um, like, OK, and then we floated for 10 days. I know exactly, it's like, so what happens if something goes wrong? 

And it was like, well, yeah, I mean, you're 7 hours to 10 hours from hell. So we're like, OK, so if things go seriously go wrong, like, I have to be good with this is where it's gonna end, you know, and I was like, well, actually, if you're gonna end, you know, grizzly bear gets me in the Arctic, I mean, that's a pretty fantastic way to go, if that's gonna, I mean, Go big or go home. And uh and it ended up being so amazing. It was the first time, you know, all of us who went, I think it was the first time in my career that I had been a part of a trip that I wasn't responsible for. So just being able to sit and not do anything, and I wasn't in charge of meals, I wasn't in charge of making sure everyone had gear, I just could actually be present. It was such a blessing. And, you know, we saw grizzly bears every night you'd wake up, you know, we would go hiking around and just kicking around because all we had to do was float the river. It was like 33 miles that we had to float. So we didn't really have it, and it was 24 hour daylight, so you just, you just existed, you know, it'd be like midnight and someone would say, hey, do you want to go for a hike? And we'd be like, Yeah, let's go hiking. So, at midnight, we're hiking in broad daylight, or, you know, dimmer light, cause you just watch the sun kind of go around you. And we'd get back at 30, go to bed, wake up at 10:00 a.m. and we'd have breakfast, and then get floating, and, you know, it's just this beautiful rhythm, and no access to any kind of internets or any of the world craziness. It was, like, completely being present in this wild place that sees less people than the entire, a place the size of the state of Georgia, and sees, like, maybe 2500 people a year. 

So, just, we were in places where people had literally, maybe never been, except for some of the indigenous people of the place, right? And we saw more baby caribou, we saw grizzly bears, like, every day. We never saw musk ox, we saw one Arctic wolf, we saw Arctic terns, snowy owls, you know, all the things. The day before our last day, or maybe it's two days before, we're sitting on the boats, we were just finishing up lunch, and one of our guides said, yeah, well, you know, we'll have to talk about polar bear watch. And we're like, wait, what? No one mentioned anything about polar bears. Wait, hold on. And then she starts telling us that the last night of our trip and the bush planes are gonna pick us up on this little barrier island in the Beaufort Sea, which is, you know, the Arctic Ocean hits this island, and then there's the Beaufort Sea. And so we were gonna come out of this channel, paddle 2 miles to this 1 mile long, 1.25 mile wide barrier island, and that's where the polar bears come off the Arctic ice. And we'll hunt for seals. So because of that, we will have to do 2 hour shifts to be on the lookout for polar bears, should they come on, because then everyone would have to wake up if we're all sleeping in the company front and then defend the camp for bears. I'm like, like, what? It's not in the that's clearly not in the brochure. Well, I did not sign up for this. This is how it is. This is how it is. And so, you know, sure enough, we're all like, and I remember telling, we all had to tell everybody, and there's this great picture of Dwayne Williams, me telling Dwayne, and Dwayne's like, what, what, what? And I'm like, yeah, I know. I had the same, it was, it's a classic moment caught on film. 

And um, so sure enough, you know, that night we get there. We see polar bear tracks and polar bear tracks that are, you know, both my feet put together coming across the barrier island. But we never, we never saw a polar bear, but we did see plenty of their tracks, and coming off the ice and everything else. And, you know, we did get to dip in the Arctic Ocean and all, it was so amazing. But we decided as a collective, because we'd had such an amazing trip, we all stayed up together until I think About 4 a.m. for polar bear watch together and sort of it was our last night, um, in the Arctic and it was a beautiful way to kind of celebrate just again, your insignificance on this planet. Collective insignificance, but also just to celebrate, like, there are still places on this planet that have magic and mysticism to them that You know, remind us how, how literally insignificant we are, but then also how fully connected the experience of being human is. And so it was a lovely experience, but I would, I, I still remember thinking, like, next time read the fine print, like read the fine print. Like, we didn't even know. So what food, like, I remember getting into Fairbanks and the first we all got to this hotel and we had dinner together and it was like, well, so, so where's the food coming from? Like, no one had explained to us what the menus were, you know, like any, like, there was so much like, just trust us. We've got this. And so we did, and I'm glad I did. It was lovely, but, you know, it's still here. Great story. But I can now add, I can now add, I'm a, I'm a certified polar bear watcher to my resume. Yeah, that's, yeah, polar bears are no joke. I, it's like, yeah, I did a project in Alaska once as well, and it's like I heard back from one of the other teams that was there. I was like, yeah, we went to the polar bear Island and they met us with the rifles, and we were like, why are you guys doing that? It's like, ah, sometimes they get a little curious. 

So, yeah, uh, that's, that's something to take very seriously. Yeah. Yeah, that's what they told us is like, you know, grizzly bears, and we had grizzly bears, you'd wake up in the morning and a bear had walked right in front of your tent. We were maybe within 200 yards of a huge male bear, and once he caught whiff of us, he hightailed turned around the other direction. and took off as fast as he could. Like, they were not interested in people. So, they had sort of told us, you know, unless it's a sow with cubs, and even then, if you can just back down, they're not around people, they're not habituated. And so, they would very, I would say, not necessarily benign, but it wasn't a thing. But they did talk about the same thing with polar bears, they get really curious, and that curiosity can sometimes get them into trouble. So, so they did have a big rifle that, but thankfully, we, it never came out. Yeah, no, and yeah, and that's great. It's a wonderful story. It's maybe that's something that can inspire someone else to go do that exact same thing. So, go back. Yeah, it's the joy of stories. That's why they're so great. And, you know, we are like my favorite part about the show sometimes it's just the time flies by and we're already at the end of our interview, and it's such a shame. But before we let you go, is there anything else you'd like to talk about? You know, I would just encourage anyone listening to um just keep being human. And give themselves some grace in this crazy time in the world that we're living in. 

Go outside in nature and sit, even if it's in your backyard, watch the stars, and just take some deep breaths and trust that we're in a really huge community of people who love land and land loves us, and to use that in those times when it seems really dark and Maybe not everyone will get to go spend the night with a polar bear, but, um, you know, a firefly is just as cool. So go in nature, get some healing, and invite your friends and family to join you. That's a great and wonderful message. Thank you for that. And last but not least, if anyone does want to reach out to ask you about anything, what's the best way for them to do that? Yeah, they can always go to our website and find anyone on our, our team, which is CDT coalition.org, and they're always welcome to reach out to me. My email is public. It's Tmartinez@ CDTcoalition.org, and I'm always happy to respond and always happy to talk to people about the trail or anything related, so. Very cool. Well, thank you so much for being here. This was great. Yeah, you're welcome. 

That's our show. Thank you, Teresa for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Bye. See you, everybody.