WAITSFIELD, VT (November 5, 2008) — The Northern Forest Canoe Trail (NFCT) is thrilled to announce the hire of a two new staff members: a Trail Director and a Program Director. NFCT’s Trail Director oversees all aspects of maintaining our 740-mile water trail, including volunteer management. NFCT’s Program director, a new position created with funding from the Sudbury Foundation, will focus on community outreach and sustainable tourism development.
Joining the NFCT staff are Walter Opuszynski and Eve Komosa:
Walter Opuszynski (BS Unity College, Unity, ME) will begin as Trail Director on December 1, 2008. Walter has been devoted to the idea of helping to foster people’s interactions with the outdoors for as long as he can remember. It all started at a young age, as the oldest of four children, growing up in the middle of a small oak forest in Connecticut. He brought the desire to understand and share the outdoors to Unity College in Maine, where a deeper understanding of the environment was explored through earth science courses. Walter went on to work for the Maine Conservation Corps and the Vermont Department of Forest Parks and Recreation, where he gained both broad and deep experience in trail building and volunteer management. Most recently, he has been sole proprietor of a trails and timber management company he started, True to the Land, LLC. Walter currently lives in Adamant, Vermont, with his wife Christy and two dogs, Scout and Chloe.
Eve J. Komosa (BS University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) will begin as Program Director on January 12, 2009. Eve is passionate about the natural world, and has worked in the fields of conservation and environmental education for the past fifteen years. Prior to working for NFCT, she served as Education Director for Olbrich Botanical Gardens, a public garden in Madison, Wisconsin, as a philanthropy manager for The Nature Conservancy of Illinois, and as a Naturalist for Chicago’s North Park Village Nature Center. She also spent four years teaching paddling with Rutabaga Outdoor Programs in Madison, Wisconsin. Eve’s husband, Darrin Kimbler, completed a solo NFCT through-paddle in October of 2007. Together, Eve and Darrin enjoy numerous outdoor adventures, and have moved to Vermont both for NFCT, as well as to pursue a more rural lifestyle and start their own small farm.
The Northern Forest Canoe Trail links the watersheds of northern New York, Vermont, Québec, New Hampshire, and Maine, and is a unique thread tying together the Northern Forest Region. The 740-mile trail traces historic Native American travel routes through the rivers of this region, and is a living reminder of our history, where waterways were both highways and routes of communication. Flowing with the stories of Native Americans, European settlers, and the development of mill towns and the timber industry, the Trail’s rich heritage serves as a basis of widely accessible, environmentally friendly tourism in many of the small communities along the route.
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