Meet Our New WOW-VT Steering Committee Member: Carmen McFadden

We’re thrilled to welcome Carmen McFadden (they/them) to the Women and Our Woods – Vermont (WOW-VT) Steering Committee! Carmen brings fresh energy, insight, and a deep passion for forestry education and community building.  We'll let Carmen take it from here!

Hello WOW-VT members! My name is Carmen McFadden (they/them), and I am the newest addition to your steering committee. I am so excited to help plan fun events, provide a new perspective, and hopefully meet you all. I am a senior studying forestry at the University of Vermont, a program notorious for trying to recruit other students to change their major (it's simply the best!). UVM Forestry has provided me with opportunities to establish field skills such as inventory, develop my own ethics around harvesting practices, forest management and ecological forestry, and encouraged all perspectives on the topics we discuss in class. I have had the fortune to serve as a Dendrology TA, meaning every week I get to teach a group of students how to identify native and introduced tree species within the state.

Though, the thing that is most special about UVM Forestry to me is the diverse class of students. We are the opposite of the typical boy’s club that forestry has historically been, instead full of non-traditional students. When I first arrived at school, I was welcomed by the Femmes in Forestry club, which my roommate Amelia Weeden and I now run. Femmes in Forestry aims to create space for any non-traditional student interested in forestry to learn more, gain experience in the field, and build community centered on support and respect for one another. Coming up soon, the UVM Femmes in Forestry will be participating in a meet-up with UMass Forestry Femmes, kindly hosted by Smokey House Center. This is an exciting opportunity to bridge state lines and forge long-lasting friendships, while providing a chance to view silvicultural treatments on Smokey House’s property, assist planting a community orchard, and network with women landowners and professionals. On Saturday, November 15, Smokey House Center will be hosting a Women in Forestry potluck - and you’re all invited! The event will begin at 5:00 PM, grills and grillables will be provided, and it will be a relaxed evening with the goal of connecting students to like-minded individuals with experience in the forestry realm. I hope to see you there!

I would also like to use this platform to highlight an incredible event I attended the weekend of October 12. This summer, I spent time working at Smokey House Center, which is unceded Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican land, which provided me the opportunity to connect with members of the tribe Wylee Dodge and Ashwut. In upstate New York, a BIPOC owned farm called Soul Fire has been working tirelessly to return 250 acres of land, and finally all the legal documents have been signed. To celebrate and honor this restoration of land to its original stewards, Soul Fire organized a Peace Walk in collaboration with the Grafton Peace Pagoda. I spent the weekend walking on the side of the road, drumming, chanting, praying, and visiting culturally important sites, such as the Hudson river, the Stockbridge mission sites, burial grounds, and ancient healing waters. This weekend allowed me the chance to spiritually connect with land I have stewarded, and more importantly, provided a reminder that all of us have a duty to go out of our way to listen and learn from the Indigenous peoples who lived here before us.