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Tanya and Cody are originally from the lovely eastern U.S. but have spent the past four years working and living in the California Desert. Meeting while leading restoration and trail crews for the Student Conservation Association in the Mojave Desert, their fun loving ways and enthusiasm for the outdoors made for a perfect fit and they have been inseparable ever since.
As summer trail crew leaders for high school age volunteers, Tanya and Cody were able to help their crewmembers cultivate a kinship with the land. In return, the couple has been rewarded with the refreshing insights, positive attitudes, and contagious energy that is common when young people are encouraged to be themselves and thrive in the outdoors. As supervisors for college age interns, the couple further developed their own land ethic.
While working side by side with our nation’s land managers they have witnessed first-hand the use and impacts that we as public land users can place on the natural environment. When not leading crews and volunteering on public lands, Tanya and Cody enjoy road trips, backpacking, climbing, reading, photography, thrift stores, live music, and meeting great people during their travels.
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Tanya feels her love for nature and the outdoors comes from her father, who introduced her and her sister to the outdoors of eastern Pennsylvania at an early age; sleeping under the stars, swimming in the water of Bear Wallow Pond, horseback riding, and fishing. Tanya spent her childhood days playing outside and enjoying the fruits of their blueberry bush, cherry, pear and apple trees.
In college, Tanya decided to pursue her interest in art and graduated from the University of Pittsburg in 2003 with a degree in Art History and Studio Arts. After graduation, she started working for the Student Conservation Association’s Conservation Leadership Program. Here she worked with urban high school students on various trail work projects. Tanya’s leadership and trail work experience led her to a Project Coordinator position for the SCA’s Desert Restoration Corps. After two years of leading restoration crews and doing public outreach, she strongly believes that community involvement and environmental awareness are the key ingredients for positive social change towards our environment and our public lands. Tanya’s to-do-list for 2008 is to become an intermediate climber, practice art every day - in some way, and to travel abroad. Her long-term goal is to create her own graduate program involving art, education, and the environment where she hopes to inspire future Andy Goldsworthy’s and other natural artists.
Cody is driven by a passion for the natural world and a desire to explore as much of it as possible. His affinity for the environment was cultivated during his childhood in the hills of east Tennessee. Cody’s fondness for the outdoors continued to blossom when he moved to Knoxville, TN for high school and college and began to go backpacking in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. College studies in Psychology and Anthropology at the University of Tennessee allowed him to study people and our place in the world. Study and travel abroad trips to Europe and the Middle East provided timely opportunities to apply his studies first hand and to gain a more global perspective on human interactions with their land.
After college, Cody headed west for an internship in the California Desert and immediately fell in love with the arid west, public land, and designated wilderness areas. He spent four years working with the Student Conservation Association’s Desert Restoration Corps in the Mojave and Sonoran Desert. Cody has also had the privilege to lead eager and enthusiastic high school volunteers for month long backcountry trail projects in places like the North Cascades and Yosemite National Park. While on the road, Cody is looking forward to hiking new trails, photographing new places, extending his long list of friends around the country, and visiting all the great small towns that dot those long stretches of western highways.
