BOXERWOOD RISING: Meet Olivia Saacke, National Park Trail Crew

Throughout our 25th year, we’ll be sharing stories of young people whose Boxerwood experiences shaped their passions and vocations. Have a young friend to recommend? Contact Catherine Epstein: catherine@boxerwood.org

By the end of a work day, Olivia Saacke wants to be worn out. As a member of the trail crew at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Olivia spends many of her working hours hiking through the forest and building bridges, staircases, and ladders using only the materials around her. “When we’re at a project site we’re looking at things like, what kind of trees are around here? What kind of rocks can we work with?” she explained. “It’s engineering with these imperfect materials. You’re shaping rock and trying to use chainsaws to make this imperfect material fit together almost perfectly.” She added, “It’s a physical and mental workout. I want to feel tired on both sides at the end of the day.”

One of the first places she encountered this physical and mental stimulation was Boxerwood, which Olivia visited often as a child growing up in Lexington. She credits her early love of the outdoors to her parents, and that love was enhanced by the active learning in Boxerwood programs: “That hands-on learning, not only being outside but learning outside. I remember that very clearly from Boxerwood,” she said. “I’ve kind of shaped my whole career around that concept…What I got out of Boxerwood really is reflected in my career now.” 

As a 4th grader at Waddell, Olivia encountered our interactive watershed board, which demonstrates how pollution – and its prevention – affect local waterways from Rockbridge County all the way to the Chesapeake Bay. “I remember that board really clearly,” Olivia said. “I have memories of playing in Woods Creek, and the Maury River, and the James River growing up, and then that board put it all together, like, ‘Oh, this is all connected.’” She went on, “I had to see it visually, and that’s the kind of learning that sticks in my head. It showed how everything is connected, and how everything runs downstream and affects each other, all part of this larger system.”

This sense of interconnection – both with other people and with the Earth – has stayed with Olivia through her education and career. After graduating from RCHS in 2014, she pursued a degree in geographic science from JMU. From both her professors and early bosses, she learned about the wide array of jobs within her field. In her first position at the Glenwood-Pedlar Ranger District on the George Washington-Jefferson National Forest, “I basically just wanted to jump in every truck I could to get experience…I just was fascinated in all of it.” Alongside her front desk job, Olivia’s mentors gave her a huge amount of flexibility. “I was able to test out, ‘Do I want to go in more with the wildlife? Do I want to go more into timber? Or hydrology? Or recreation?’ It was a really safe and fun way to just test all of those out in real life.”

Exploring possibilities was also part of her early Boxerwood experiences. As a schoolchild, Olivia vividly remembers working with Boxerwood educators to catch and analyze macroinvertebrates in Woods Creek: “We’d go rub rocks and find what species were in the nets,” she said. “There’s mayflies and stoneflies and water pennies and these indicate healthy water quality.” Many years later, she continues using skills from those fourth grade programs. “We spend a lot of time on the rivers here fly fishing, and I still gotta turn over a rock and see what’s underneath it. All the time, I’m like, ‘Oh, there’s a water penny on this, did you know that means it’s a healthy stream?’ I always nerd out about that, still. It just stuck in my brain forever.” 

Across her childhood, Boxerwood lit in Olivia a sense of wonder and interest in her environment. “It made me curious about the natural world,” she said. “‘What bugs are those? Or flowers? Or turtles? Or frogs?’” Olivia draws a clear line between this early curiosity at Boxerwood and her current work: “That’s what I do now in my job, like, ‘What are these trees around me? What are these salamanders?’” Her coworkers share this passion, which they pursue even off the clock: “At lunch, we’ll sit there and see how many trees we can ID just right overhead of us,” she said. “Some of my coworkers are really into mushrooms, and I love learning all the salamander species, and some of them are really into trees. Just connecting and learning about your surroundings and carrying that with you – that makes you invested and connected to where you’re working and living.”

Beyond connecting to her own surroundings, Olivia loves guiding others to do the same. She originally thought she would pursue a field more focused in science, but wound up loving the public-facing element of her work in National Forests and Parks. “I really like talking to the public and getting them out there on their public lands, like, ‘Here’s these awesome fishing spots and campgrounds and trails,'” she said, explaining that she’s always excited “to share my love for public lands or a forest or a park.”

Some of Olivia’s earliest connections with land, of course, happened back at Boxerwood. “What a cool place to explore as a kid,” she reflected. “I mean, it feels endless. You’ve got a whole bunch of variety. You’ve got 'The Eye' with all the shrubby trees, and then more open places, and you’ve got that big magnolia…it’s actually not a huge piece of land, but all that variety just makes it feel so much bigger and vast.”

These days, when she returns home, Olivia still goes Boxerwood exploring. “I was walking around a few months ago with my parents,” she said. “There’s so many different tree species there and there’s so much going on if you really pay attention to the diversity that’s at Boxerwood.” As a builder of trails, Olivia said, “It’s cool for me, now, looking at the trails and paying attention to the boardwalks and the actual trail structures. Just the plot itself is a beautiful, incredible piece of land that will always be one of my favorite places. It’s just a magical place.” 

Olivia’s love of outdoor work has taken her through parks, campgrounds, trails, forests, and rivers throughout the country – from Virginia to Tennessee to Wyoming. In all those places, she continues to embrace the gratification of wearing herself out: “I get to do my favorite thing in the world, which is hike all day and be outside all day, but I’m also constantly learning and constantly working on things that challenge me.” Still, despite all of her adventures, she said, “I’ve never really experienced anything else like Boxerwood.”