The Sierra Nevada Group of the Sierra Club announces the next public program on Thursday March 30, 2023 from 6:30 – 8:30pm at Seaman’s Lodge Pioneer Park Nevada City. Our featured speaker will be Mia Monroe, a long time Park Ranger at Muir Woods National Monument.
The program entitled “Muir Woods National Monument is an example of leadership in thoughtful environmental stewardship” is a mere opener for Mia who passionately continues her career at Muir Woods beginning in 1982.
As she said in her interview when she received the Bay Nature Local Hero Award:
I feel so fortunate to work in a place that’s so beautiful and so nurturing and makes my spirit soar. I’m a little unusual in that I’m a career ranger and I’m still working in the field. My office has green walls. I breathe in the fresh air, I see the cycles of nature, I greet the first spring flowers and the nesting birds.
I’ve been here when redwoods have fallen. To contemplate something that’s been standing for hundreds of years taking a new position in the forest – the smell and how soon afterwards the birds and butterflies find the new sunny spot, and seeing all the redwoods grow to that new light – there’s something about the change in a forest that’s truly awesome. I’ve been here when the salmon are spawning; it’s thrilling to see them make their way up the stream, to witness that ancient ritual of the spawning cycle.
And then, I’ve taken a lot of young people through here. I can hardly wait to introduce them to their first banana slug or show them how to find a redwood seed or show them where to go to find a flower or a butterfly, to show kids how to find those clues so they feel comfortable being their own explorers in nature.
So that’s really been my work for these many years – to be part of the teams that re-weave the ecosystem here and to help actively engage citizens in that process. It’s been a dawning awareness that we have to take care of not just the individual redwoods but also the forest and the watershed.