"Learning about stewardship and choosing to turn your passion into action is something you can do anywhere and everywhere."

Our host Marci Mowery welcomes Amy Hill to explore how Pennsylvanians can “Turn Your Passion Into Action” during Pennsylvania Healthy Lands Week, with this year’s spotlight on Bedford County. They share how the initiative connects volunteers, families, students, and outdoor enthusiasts with hands-on stewardship of the state’s cultural and natural resources—across state parks, forests, historic sites, and community spaces.

In Buchanan State Forest, volunteers help preserve the legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps, including an African American CCC camp from the Great Depression. Marci and Amy discuss uncovering remnants of historic camp structures, restoring bridges and stonework, and supporting climate resiliency. These efforts safeguard today’s forest experience while honoring the work that built much of the outdoor infrastructure people enjoy now.

Marci and Amy also highlight projects at Shawnee State Park and other Bedford County locations, where invasive plant removal, trail improvements, scrap metal cleanups, and family-friendly “micro-litter” projects at pavilions all add up to healthier ecosystems. Woody invasive plants will be upcycled into fish habitat structures for park lakes, improving aquatic environments rather than heading to a landfill.

Running from September 26 (National Public Lands Day) through October 4—during Bedford County’s fall foliage festival—Healthy Lands Week invites participants to sign up at pahealthylandsweek.org, volunteer one day, then hike, bike, paddle, or explore covered bridges and local farm-to-table food the next. And while the spotlight is on Bedford County this year, Marci and Amy emphasize that stewardship can start in any Pennsylvania community, all year long.

Key Topics:

• What Is Pennsylvania Healthy Lands Week? (Bedford County Spotlight) (00:00:38)
• “Turn Your Passion into Action” – Personal Meaning and Stewardship Mindset (00:02:21)
• How Visitor Use Impacts Trails and Natural Areas (00:03:28)
• CCC Camp History, Hands-On Preservation (00:04:42)
• Climate Resiliency Projects: Testing Southern Tree Species and Preparing Forests for Hotter Summers (00:06:36)
• Stewardship Projects: Vegetation Management, Bridge/Trail/Infrastructure Restoration (00:07:53)
• Shawnee State Park: Invasive Removal and Upcycling Woody Invasives Into Fish Habitat Devices (00:10:04)
• Wet-Trail Fixes, Scrap Metal Removal, And “Micro Litter” Pavilion Cleanup (00:12:22)
• Family-Friendly, Student, And Corporate Volunteer Opportunities in Bedford County (00:15:49)
• Event Details: Dates, How to Participate, And Bedford County as A Fall Recreation Destination (00:16:41)

Resources:

• Pa Healthy Lands Week: PaHealthyLandsWeek.org
• Healthy Lands Week Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HealthyLandsWeek/
• Healthy Lands Week Instagram: @HealthyLandsWeek

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I want to remind everybody as well that Hensylvania Hillylands we can take place anywhere. Just because we have decided to shine a spotlight on one particular community, you know, for us it's a chance to show and tell a little bit that we can take these things we've been talking about for a number of years and put them out there. We'll have video, photo, you know, conversations with people will be able to really demonstrate the kinds of things that you can do. But you can do these types of activities anywhere and everywhere. That maybe that will inspire other communities to do the same thing.

Imagine a place where stress fades, fresh air fills your lungs, and adventure awaits around every corner. Welcome to Think Outside, the podcast that inspires you to explore, connect, and embrace the outdoors. Welcome to Think Outside with the Pennsylvania Parks and Forest Foundation, I'm your host Marcy Mowry, and today Amy Hill is joining me, and we are going to discuss Pennsylvania Healthy Lands Week. We spoke a little bit about this about a year ago this time, but there's a new twist to Healthy Lands Week, and we're pretty excited to share that with you. Welcome, Amy.

Thank you, Marcy.

So, do you want to lead with sharing what the twist is this year?

Well, the twist for Pennsylvania Healthy Lands Week this year is we are putting a spotlight on one particular community and all of the wonderful things that Pennsylvania has to offer. And this year, it is Bedford County, Pennsylvania, and what the community can do to express their stewardship for the beautiful things that are located there in that county.

So, is it is it throughout the county that the Healthy Lands Week will be taking place?

Yes. So we have a number of different volunteer opportunities throughout the entire county, three different state parks and a state forest, as well as some other properties throughout the county, will be opportunities for both residents, citizens of that county, and any visitors as well could come and play a role in stewardship in those those wonderful places.

So Healthy Lands Week was designed to connect people to the the stewardship of the cultural and natural assets of Pennsylvania and Bedford County has a lot of both of those things: cultural assets and natural assets. And this year is a little bit different, as you were saying. We're putting the spotlight on Bedford County, and the tagline is "Turn your passion into action. So, what's the origin of the tagline?

So, the tagline is a little bit personal for me. I think a lot about how much I enjoy outdoor recreation and how much I appreciate the cultural and natural assets that Pennsylvania has to offer, so the tagline comes from this idea of taking the things that you love and doing something to make sure that they remain accessible to you, that they remain wonderful for outdoor recreation opportunities, and taking that a step further, that we can't really appreciate the outdoors just for fun, if we're not also thinking of conservation and preservation, to make sure that our environment around us is healthy as well.

Yeah, because some of those places that we love, we actually contribute to some of the challenges with our visitation. When you have a lot of visitors coming to an area, maybe you're you're wearing down a trail or You're introducing invasive plants with you know seeds on your clothes or seeds stuck in your shoes, so it's kind of fun. Some of the projects that we're going to be looking at for Healthy Lands Week is to address those challenges through some hands-on opportunities.

Yes, many of the projects are sort of undoing the harm that has been done or left behind, and you know some of the stewardship begins with your own behavior as well. So, in volunteering and spending time removing invasive species, or restoring a trail, or restoring the bridges, or you know, stone structures, or things like that-that of the places that we can appreciate. I think that that footprint that human beings sometimes leave behind, and maybe doing that work will be a little more mindful ourselves of how we can prevent that kind of need in the future.

Let's start with Buchanan State Forest because that's an area where there will be some projects, and you and I both had the opportunity to go look at those projects on the ground. And my recollection is there are two Civilian Conservation Corps camps where volunteers will have a chance to not. Only see the remains of the camps, but maybe help to find some of the the footprints of the structures. One of those camps was an African American Civilian Conservation Corps, and for those who are unfamiliar with the Civilian Conservation Corps or the CCC, this was a work employment program during the Great Depression. Hired young men or the boys, as they were called, between ages of 17 and 23, and provided them not just with employment, but with job training, education, and three meals a day. You know, this was a time when food was scarce, and so being able to go in there and not just see that history, but help to preserve it, is to me is a really unique opportunity and a fun opportunity.

Yeah, absolutely. There's there's certainly a legacy there, and I think it ties in with that that important investment that we as communities make in these spaces. That preserving the history, telling that story, thinking very much of the work that those young men did way back during the Great Depression, and what needs to be done now. There's still young people who have that need to get involved and to learn those skills, and much of the infrastructure that we know, the parks that we know, were were built by those those people back in those days. You know, the Conservation Corps, you know, made a real impact on the spaces that we know and love all these years later. So I think that's a great example of of ways that you kind of can do something now that connects you to the history of it, but also preserves it for the future.

Yeah, I agree. Another project is looking at climate resiliency, and there were some trees planted that were not typical to our range. They're more southern species, but we're having longer, hotter summers, and so volunteers will be, you know, looking at those plants, helping to clear them out. Maybe we're putting around some protective cages, so contributing to our knowledge base of how we prepare ourselves, as you know, our we our tree and plant species change here in Pennsylvania because we need our trees. They provide so many functions for us, and if we're not prepared, we could be we could we could experience some adverse things, for lack of better word.

Yeah, I think you know some of the adverse effects of of this of climate change is already present in our woods, and so the project that you're talking about, where we're taking a look at these trees and researching them and making sure that we're learning all that we can, so we can protect ourselves of the future; that we can stay ahead of it, and that's a really important part of stewardship. I think so. Not just because trees are great, but because if our human existence depends on a healthy environment around us,

trees are great. Though we're going to be planting them in both Warriors Path and Shawnee, and then the kind of the last in my head, is the last sort of batching of projects in Buchanan is really looking at how we care for the resource. You know, we're going to be doing some vegetation management. We're going to be doing some restoration of bridges, some work on some some structures, all making sure that those pieces of infrastructure, those pieces of places we want to visit, remain welcoming and safe for visitors.

Yeah, and I think we enjoy these spaces. You know, I speak for myself. I spend every free moment I can hiking and biking and kayaking and doing those kinds of things. But there has to be a balance that, in order to enjoy those places, I recognize that I need to stay on the trail or not invite those invasive species in that are going to crowd out the the native vegetation or the native, you know, flora and fauna, that type of thing. So these projects are really important. I think that although the bridge is already there, let's keep it functional so people don't make a social path somewhere else and tramp down some other vegetation near the trail. That trail maintenance goes a long way for conservation on the edges of the trail.

And you have some experience on that. You were a ridge runner for the Appalachian Trail.

I was.

So you've seen a lot of trail. I've seen a lot of trail,

and I've seen a lot of trash on the trail, and I've seen how those invasive species can really encroach upon, you know, something so enjoyable as a walk in the woods, right? And human beings, wherever we go, we we leave a trace, and unless we take steps and are mindful of what that impact is, we're going to ruin it, and we have a track record of ruining things. But I think you know that's part of stewardship is getting out there and maintaining those things, but also helping people to see. And understand what what small part they can play in in making it right.

Well, you touched on the invasive plants, and that is we will be doing some invasive plant removal at Shawnee State Park. And sometimes invasives, you know, naturally blow in the wind. Sometimes they come in on our gear. There was actually there our knowledge base has changed, so there are some plants that we're trying to remediate or remove now that were actually plants that we thought were beneficial decades ago. So throughout the week, we'll be doing invasive plant removal. But one of the cool things is we're going to be doing some woody invasive plant removal at Shawnee, and then taking that woody vegetation and putting it into fish enhancement devices that will we will sink into the lake. So many of our state park lakes, you know, they're flooded areas and they don't have necessarily all of the aquatic systems that you need to produce and keep a healthy fish population. So this will actually be something really cool that we're taking something that we're seeing as a problem and repurposing it into something that will create habitat for a diversity of fish.

It's a really fun way of upcycling something. Truly, I kind of get you know two two positive impacts from the same effort. So you know, I think that's that's a really exciting thing to do that you sort of make the best of the bad situation that we have to remove this these vegetative species that they're causing a problem in the lake. But you know, rather than just throwing them in the landfill, which is perhaps another, we can find a way to make them really benefit again, tying in the recreation and the human enjoyment of these places at the same time.

Yes, and one question that when sharing that with people, they're like, "Oh, what about? Are you introducing that invasive into the aquatic system? And these are not aquatic plants, so the you know the seeds won't be there. It'll be woody vegetation, and you know that that issue has been addressed. So don't want people to think that we're just spreading into a new environment. We are also looking at taking a trail that, when we visited, we couldn't even walk it because it was would have gone over our boots the the volume of water. So looking at how we can make that trail, you know, more accessible to people, and you know, doing some some structure to help people lift people out of the water,

right? Right, and so you know again, this is where that human ingenuity I think ties in that it's a low lying area of a trail. It it can be really muddy. It can cause you can cause a lot of trouble, not just for your boots and your socks and that less than fun experience of soggy feet, but that we can make it a trail that people can still use while directing the water or filling that in, in a way that the the water flow can go where it needs to go and the trail can go where it needs to go.

Yeah, so not preventing function,

right,

but allowing that to happen. Was there any any project that you were excited about at Shawnee?

I think that's a good question. I am particularly interested in the fish habitat one because that that's not something I have a lot of experience with. But any kind of trail maintenance is good, and I know there's another project there where there's sort of a bunch of scrap metal that got left behind, and it's kind of you don't even really notice that it's there. It's sort of off the road and in the woods and all that stuff, but it's a real mess, right? That just throughout history somehow somebody tossed a culvert here or you know a fence post there, and it's just sort of piled up and rusting in in the forest. And I always feel bad when I see those kinds of things deep in the forest. That it's like just get it out of there. Like don't put it there in the first place. But since it's there, it it does need some some strong arms and some healthy backs to help pull it out of there, because you know conservation takes very little sometimes. You know, it's just the mindfulness of removing those things that are in the way; they don't belong there. So pulling them out, I don't know if they'll be able to recycle that metal or not, but that is something that you know, sort of that before and after, right, is very satisfying. I think to to clean something up that way and allow all of the natural, you know, indigenous species and things to just kind of like move back in where they belong is always a rewarding experience.

Well, you know, and I'm thinking about that in more of a micro level because one of the projects is cleaning up the pavilions. The pavilions are very heavily used, and oftentimes they're when people are celebrating, they're putting it staples in to staple their picnic tablecloths. They're they're hanging up flyers using thumbtacks. Maybe they're throwing a confetti or. Other things and all of that accumulates, and it it puts wear and tear on the structures. It you know creates a hazard for birds who might be picking up confetti. So we're going to be cleaning those up. And when we looked at these at the beginning of the summer, the staff had already done that, but because of the the popularity of them, and I think, in my mind, that's one of the areas. If we think about it, doesn't seem much like, oh, I'm here and I'm using this. This isn't that big of a deal. But that accumulation of every user every day or every weekend, it adds up to a lot of staples, a lot of thumbtacks, a lot of a lot of micro litter that needs to be removed, and so we'll have volunteers out there, and that's a really family-friendly project. Is always doing some of that micro cleanup.

Yeah, absolutely, and I think you know there's something for everybody on this list of of projects in Bedford County. It would be great to get the family to come together to do those types of things, maybe there's a service project for you know teenagers or college students, or inviting companies to get you know it's a great team building project to roll up your sleeves and to get out and to work together to accomplish something, to have a before and after kind of experience for for cleaning something, for removing something, for you know improving something, and so there's going to be many opportunities. I think for anyone and everyone in the community to get involved and to demonstrate their stewardship of pennsylvania's healthy lands, at least Bedford County's healthy lands this year.

Well, and we hope to take this to another county next year. So this is really our our pilot project, and you know I do want to emphasize that it's not just volunteer projects. There'll be some educational opportunities. There'll be some other things that you can do to participate. There might be some virtual opportunities to participate. So keep an eye on the pahealthylandsweek.org website, and that's where you can sign up for the opportunities. You can say, "Hey, I'm bringing out my entire staff to do this, and let us know. You know, we'll be prepared for you. We want we want it to be a positive experience for all of the participants. We're going to have little giveaways every day. We'll do a prize drawing among all the people that participated in that particular day, and we're going to be in multiple locations. So it might be an opportunity for you to visit some place you haven't been to before and make a difference, or it might be the place that you go every time you have an opportunity.

It's a wonderful time of year to visit Bedford County, so we're excited to be doing that. But I want to remind everybody as well that Pennsylvania Hillylands We can take place anywhere, just because we have decided to shine a spotlight on one particular community. You know, for us, it's a chance to show and tell a little bit that we can take these things we've been talking about for a number of years and put them out there. We'll have video, photo, you know, conversations with people. We'll be able to really demonstrate the kinds of things that you can do. But you can do these types of activities anywhere and everywhere. You know, Marci, the Parks and Forest Foundation has friends groups all over the place. There are all kind of projects going on year round. There are lots of different opportunities for for people to get involved. So learning about stewardship and choosing to turn your passion into action is something you can do anywhere and everywhere. And and we hope that by showcasing what people in in Bedford County, and you don't have to live in Bedford County, are more than welcome to come visit. It's a great time to do both. That maybe that will inspire other communities to do the same thing.

Yeah, I love that. And when you're saying it, that it's a great time. You know, this kicks off on September 26, which is also National Public Lands Day, it goes until october 4, which is a walk in Penns Woods. But in Bedford County, it's their Fall Foliage Festival. So you think about it that they've chose that time for a reason. So you know, making Bedford County a destination to be a part of Healthy Lands Week could be rewarding in so many different ways.

Yeah, and I think one of the reasons we chose Bedford County is they they are putting their own new renewed emphasis on outdoor recreation and Bedford County as a destination for such exciting and wonderful things to do. So maybe you come part of the week and volunteer at a Healthy Lands Week project, and then maybe the next day you get your bike and you you take the bike path or your kayak or you know plan for a hike or camping or whatever it is that you enjoy doing out there that you can do both of those things.

Maybe you go visit one of the many covered bridges.

Oh yes, Bedford County is famous for its number. Yeah. Which is in historic sites, and you know, there's many, many exciting

coffee pot, and really good farm-to-table food. A lot of good eating opportunities. So, come on out. You know, come if you don't have an opportunity to come and participate with Healthy Lands Week. You know, put Bedford County on your list of places that you want to visit and visit Shawnee State Park, Warriors Path, Blue Knob, or Buchanan State Forest, and as well as the other the other amenities that are that exist there in in Bedford County.

Great idea! It's on my list.

Excellent. If people want more information, we mentioned the the website. How else can they they stay apprised of what's happening with Healthy Lands Week?

Well, we invite you to follow us on Facebook and Instagram. We will be posting updates there regularly, as well as sharing some information and hopefully some enlightening tips about stewardship and things that people can do so. There's many ways to stay engaged with with Pennsylvania Healthy Lands Week.

Thank you, Amy. It's been fun chatting about it. I'm I'm super excited. I'm excited because it's this is an amazing partnership that we work with a lot other nonprofit organizations, state agencies, with the county, and the variety of projects that independently may not seem like large projects, but collectively are going to have a huge impact. Pretty excited about that, and looking forward to to working with people and introducing people to these special places.

Yeah, me too.

All right. Well, thank you.

Thank you.

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