Blue Ridge Country July/August 2023 - 73

HOW TO GET A LICHEN NAMED AFTER YOU
'I Feel Like a Jedi Master'
Veteran Smokies educator Susan Sachs helps kids fall in love with
the park's mountain wonders.
By NANCY HENDERSON | Photos courtesy SUSAN SACHS
M
ore than once, while park
ranger Susan Sachs was
manning the visitor center
at Alaska's Denali National
Park and Preserve
in the mid-1990s, a guest
asked, " We have one
hour. What can we see? "
Suppressing a chuckle-after all, it
had probably taken them several days
to get there, and they'd only allotted 60
minutes to take in one of the nation's
most magnificent treasures-she'd often
suggest, " Get down on your hands and
knees, and feel the tundra. Look at it.
Smell it. Feel it. Lie in it. "
" It was surprising how many people
would come back and say, 'That was
amazing. I'm so glad you told me to do
that,' " says Sachs, 58, education branch
coordinator for the Great Smoky Mountains
National Park. She has brought
along that perspective.
" I love exploring the little things.
The big things are great, but the little
things are what hold my interest and
get me excited. "
Still, it's the big picture-not the details-that
appeals most to Sachs, who
leads curriculum-based in-person education
programs for 20,000 students each
year as well as virtual learning for 8,000.
Stationed in Cherokee, North Carolina,
she also oversees the Tennessee side
of the Smokies, connecting kids to the
broader, sometimes lesser-known, stories
of the mountains around them.
Ironically, Sachs never set foot in
a national park as a child. Instead, her
family vacationed in Ocean City and the
Susan Sachs, right, enjoys creating student learning
opportunities that she didn't have in high school or college.
Chesapeake Bay near their home in Baltimore.
Her mother's obvious delight in
collecting shells on the beach did, however,
spark Sachs' curiosity about the
natural world.
But it wasn't until the mid-1980s, as
she hiked and camped with friends in
Shenandoah National Park and on U.S.
Forest Service land while earning a degree
in business and labor relations at the
University of Maryland- " an outdoor
education track didn't exist when I was
going to college, " she says-that the outdoor
" wow " moments started to surface,
one after another.
Sachs' first post-graduation job, as a
union representative in Washington,
D.C., proved far more stressful than
she'd bargained for, especially given the
anti-union environment back then.
" I really needed more of a background
in how to counsel people, because mostly
what I did was try to help people who
were having difficulties in their jobs, "
she says. " We almost always lost any case
we had. ... I tend to take people's probJULY/AUGUST
2023 73

Blue Ridge Country July/August 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country July/August 2023

Blue Ridge Country July/August 2023 - Cover1
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2023 - Cover2
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2023 - 3
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2023 - Cover3
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2023 - Cover4
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