Jennifer Chambers, September 2010 Volunteer of the Month

Jennifer learned about PATC 14 years ago through a colleague. As teachers at an DC area special education school, she and her colleague took groups of students to Morris cabin to hike and be in nature. The most rewarding experience of being at Morris cabin was seeing the smiles and excitement each had for a first time adventure in the mountains. These smiles and the student’s enhanced self-esteem branded a lifelong passion to introduce children to trails and nature, help them establish comfort and a relationship with both, and encourage their stewardship of the land.

Jennifer’s daughter was born nine years ago and her first hike was at two months old in the Haleakala Crater. Shortly thereafter, she met Lauren Lang who started PATC family hikes 10 years ago. After taking the Hiking Leadership workshop, she became a family hike’s leader for the next seven years. In addition to leading hikes, Lauren, Anne Regan, and she organized Family Weekends at Bear’s Den for five years helping families to spend quality time together hiking, camping, learning, and engaging in their natural environment.

In 2007, Jennifer started the Student Trail Steward program, a partnership between PATC and Northwood High School’s Environmental Education Academy to teach and engage juniors and seniors in field work experiences about outdoor recreation and land management. The Northwest Branch Park, located behind the school in Silver Spring, was the program’s outdoor classroom where students learned about how recreational use of natural surface trails impacts the trail and the surrounding ecosystem.

In 2009, Jennifer spearheaded a land restoration project between five partners, PATC, Northwood High School, Friends of Sligo Creek, Neighbors of Northwest Branch, and MD State Highway Administration. The five partners worked together to restore 15 acres of land adjacent to the school that had been used as an unofficial community landfill for more than 50 years. Three hundred volunteers, most of them students, worked 775 hours to build the three quarter mile Northwood Chesapeake Bay Trail with nine nature interpretive signs (the trail connects the high school and two neighborhoods with the Northwest Branch Trail), planted 160 native meadow  plants and nine trees, removed invasive plant species, and cleaned-up 11,000+ pounds of trash. The community celebrated its new trail and green space on National Trails Day.

When Jennifer is not engaging youth on the trail, she is hiking with her two children in her favorite oasis five minutes from her home in Silver Spring, Northwest Branch Park.