My Reflections as a FFA at Smokey House Center

Author Carmen McFadden

Published April 8, 2026

It’s Monday morning and my alarm is going off. I’m not a morning person, but I’m especially tired today. Last night, Earth Sky Time Community Farm hosted a concert and I spent hours dancing barefoot in the mud. I haul myself out of bed, brush my teeth, and get dressed. Today is a tree marking day which means the clothes I wear will get paint on them, so I throw on my ratty flannel and a pair of workpants. On my walk to work I’m greeted by my most favorite view: Dorset Peak, looming three thousand seven hundred and seventy feet tall. Whizzing past is an orange blur - Peter biking to work. I tend to walk on the road to avoid dampening my shoes in the morning dew, but seeing as a steep hike through tall reeds awaits me, I cut my losses and take the grassy path beside the pond. Pu-luck. Pu-luck. Pu-luck. Green frogs call throughout the entire summer season. They’ve become good friends of mine. 

The conference barn is the nucleus of our organization. Every weekday at (loosely) eight AM, everyone arrives. Apprentices will group up downstairs and discuss what the day has in store. It’s an ACER day, which means we’ll be devoting our time to the climate adaptive maple harvest set to be cut this fall. Thea, Kaumyar and I go to refill the paint cans while Dan goes to grab the gator. Peter and Aidan collect the tools we’ll need - two DBH tapes, the laser hypsometer, and as much blue flagging as we can stuff in our pockets. We load paint cans, paint guns, tools, backpacks, and the medkit into the bed of the gator. Dan drives the gator over to the bottom of the trail (he loves that thing so much) while the other five of us pile into a car. We park in one of the fields that is leased out to one of Smokey House’s partner farmers, Yoder Farm. I can’t help but admire the rows of gorgeous crops he’s been tending to. 

Three hours later we are up in the sugarbush and the typical jungle of brown and green is spotted with orange slashes and vibrant blue flagging. We marked the boundaries of three one-quarter acre gaps. This treatment is called group selection, a silvicultural prescription meant to mimic a medium canopy disturbance. Placing the three groups gave us significant trouble, because three streams intersect the treatment boundaries and streams must be buffered fifty feet from a harvest. Now we’ve figured it out and it’s time for lunch. I packed a veggie wrap, and apple slices with peanut butter. We sit for thirty minutes, talking about how many raccoons we could take in a fight, who would survive a bear attack, and how fast we think Kaumyar can run. During this time, I listen to the birds. There’s a black-throated green warbler (zee zee zo zo zee), an eastern pewee (peeeewee!), a red-eyed vireo (weeeee-Yuh?-weeee-Yoo) and the occasional who cooks for you? from the barred owl. 

After lunch, one group stays behind to tally the timber and the other group moves on to delineate more groups. Marking group boundaries proves difficult. The process goes as such: one person runs around flagging edge trees while another follows and takes GPS points of each tree on AvenzaMaps. After a couple trees have been tentatively flagged, we use Avenza to calculate how much area we’ve still got to cover. The difficulties arise when Avenza gets confused, and then we have no clue whether the gap we’ve marked is one quarter acre or one tenth of an acre. Once we feel confident enough with our flagging, we use the TreCoder paint gun Steve Handfield lent us, and mark each edge tree with double dots facing in and a plus sign facing out. This goes on and on, accompanied by debates over who would be each Scooby Doo character. When it’s time to go down the mountain, we entertain each other with more silly questions like: If you were walking in the forest and found a man in a jar, would you open it? I like to walk in a zigzag pattern down the steep hill. It hurts my knees less, and it feels like a game. 

Pulling into main campus, the six of us resemble a ragtag team of zombie survivalists. Covered in paint specks, reeking of sweat, and bleary-eyed, we’re still excited to tell Walker about the day. Nettle, his mystery mutt, trots up to us and just as quickly trots away disinterested. She’s motivated by Walker’s attention only (unless it's lunchtime, and then she’s your best friend). We report back our findings of the day: fresh deer scat, bear scratches on a beech, and what might have been a clump of coyote fur. 

Once we’re set free at four, we all head off to Herrick South, our home for the summer. Peter stays back to play in the woodshop. He’s been making one spoon a day! Next is a baseball bat, he says. Thea and Rose drive off to go swim at Emerald Lake, but my favorite place to cool off is much closer. Aidan and I set off in a brisk jog. Nearly instantly Kaumyar is past us - he is so fast. One mile later, I’m still catching my breath while descending the slippery rocks into the swimming hole. Surrounded by jagged phyllite, the eight foot waterfall cascades into a sparkling basin only accessible by a steep, rocky decline supported by the rope tied to a yellow birch. Kaumyar is already in, thrashing around in what he calls his water workout. I slowly work my way in. The bluefins make their way over to greet me, and I feel them bumping against my feet. Looking up, the eastern hemlock I’ve come to think of as my guardian looms over me.

Then I dive. The water catches me, cradles me, propels me forward. Cool pressure surrounds me on all sides and as I break the surface, I know I am where I’m meant to be. Aidan is making a rock stack behind me. Kaumyar is practicing tricks. When I get home, dinner will be on the table and I will have no qualm in helping clean up.

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You can read Carmen's comic Forests: Our Friends & Future here.