BENT CREEK – The more you know about your place on earth, the more likely you are to preserve and cherish it.
Call it eco-literacy, but it came to Jeanie Martin as just common sense when rapid changes and development are threatening biodiversity.
Martin launched the Blue Ridge Naturalist program at the Reuters Center at UNC Asheville in 2005, backed by a $7,000 grant from the WNC Community Foundation. The program shifted to The North Carolina Arboretum four years ago.
The mountains are more than just scenic postcards. “People have an appreciation of beauty like a red maple in the fall, but then you start asking where does the red maple grow, what kind of plants and mushrooms grow underneath it. That kind of understanding has to be cultivated.”
Before her environmental epiphany, Martin worked in health care, helping Henderson County immigrants who supply labor for much of the area’s agriculture. She treated workers with tobacco rashes and broken bones from falling from ladders in apple orchards. She saw how mothers left babies in boxes at the end of a row while they picked crops.
“I began to get the bigger picture. We’re never going to have healthier people without a healthier planet because we are not separate,” Martin said.
She quit her job and steeped herself in eco-literacy, studying the works of Kentucky writer Wendell Berry as well as the naturalist theologian Thomas Berry. She became a certified interpretive guide through the National Association of Interpretation.
Back in Asheville, she founded the Blue Ridge Naturalist program and served as the coordinator. She remains involved as an instructor.
The bioregion of the Southern Appalachians is unique with some of the world’s oldest mountains and rivers, with more tree species than in all of Europe. Here is home to the largest population of legless salamanders, the only place on the planet where you find the spruce fir moss spider, Martin said.
For Ken Czarnomski, learning more about the natural world gave him a new path in life after a career focused on engineering and architecture as an instructor at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College.
After he retired, he wanted to round out his science background with courses on biology. He was soon hooked on the Blue Ridge Naturalist certificate program.
Now he wants to inspire others to get outdoors. For his community project for his certificate, he created a trail map for the Purchase Knob area of the Great Smokies. Last year, working with the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority, he created a map of the Sam’s Knob loop trail off the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Next year, he hopes to create another trail map for a section of the Plott Balsams, working with the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy.
Czarnomski’s projects aren’t unusual for the program. The certificate entails 236 hours of classes capped by a community project of 30-50 hours.
“One of the requirements is that the project has to be off the Arboretum property and applied to the community. So we have projects that are benefiting churches or retirement communities, or providing signage and trail information for the public,” said Beth Johnson, adult education coordinator for the Arboretum.
The Arboretum offers up to 70 different classes each season, including core classes in plant identification, geology, zoology and Appalachian culture and folklore. “We have people teaching who are retired college professors and experts. Their expertise just blows my mind,” Johnson said.
So many newly certified naturalists loved their time together, learning about the woods and environment, that the graduates formed an independent Blue Ridge Naturalist Network. They meet regularly to share their knowledge and love of place and to learn more. The network has about 50 paying members and another 400 or so followers at its Facebook page.
At a potluck Tuesday at The Arboretum, the Naturalist Network honored Martin’s role in planting those first seeds for the program. “Jeanie and the Blue Ridge Naturalist program have been really influential for me,” Czarnowski said.
For information, click on www.ncarboretum.org/education/blue-ridge-naturalist-certificate-program/ or contact Beth Johnson at ejohnson@ncarboretum.org or 828-665-2492, ext. 222.
For information on the Network, click on www.facebook.com/groups/BRNNmembers/
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