Elyssia Smith | OSI Katahdin Region Trail Crew Leader

Where It Started

The summer after I graduated from High School, and before I prepared to leave my rural life in Lincoln, ME for college, I had my first trail crew experience with Friends of Baxter. I was 19 years old. I was one of only two women on the crew that summer, and I felt unsure of myself at the start.

Years earlier, my deep captivation with Baxter State Park started when I first hiked Katahdin with my dad. I was 14 years old and I saw a sign to Springer Mountain, in Georgia. From that day on, Baxter became a very special place to me. That love of the area, plus a flyer I happened to see in my High School hallway advertising the Friends of Baxter trail crew, had led me to a very uncomfortable moment. There I was, standing in a bog holding a hand tool for the first time thinking what am I doing here?

At the close of summer 2019, after five weeks of building trail and making friends, I thought I love this --how can I do this forever?

The Next Steps

In 2021, I became an OSI intern. This offered me my first youth leadership programming roles and a snug house in Millinocket that I shared with the other interns. The gift of this was that I was offered housing for the summer with a group of people my age -- I promptly fell in love with both Millinocket and the community OSI created.

I grew up in the shuttered mill town of Lincoln, and Millinocket’s similar rural, small, mill town nature appealed to me. All of a sudden, it became a place I wanted to come back to. This was rather startling, because as a teenager, I just wanted to get out of area. But, the OSI internship offered me youth programming leadership roles, and group leadership experiences in different settings. I wanted to immerse myself in the rural community in a completely new way. Things were happening—and I was part of it! I was part of the evolution of a place.

During that summer, I started to see how much potential these small-town areas for tourism and reinvention. The community supported and grew a gear library, one of the many resources that became a catalyst in the area. There are new trails and programs, opportunities, and resources that didn’t exist only a few years earlier. The momentum of all this happening, being a part of this building, is what kept me in Millinocket.

Further Down the Trail

This summer will be my fourth summer leading trail crew with OSI in the Katahdin Region and being part of the Katahdin Area Trails vision. I’ve been surprised by my capabilities – this has helped with my social comfort and given me a lot of confidence. I used to have social anxiety, and now I’m in a leadership role. One of my favorite things about crew is that we start out coworkers and end up as friends, and those connections have been really special.

From that first moment standing in a bog nearly six years ago holding a hand tool I had never used – to now, when I am teaching people how to use that tool, the safety of using that tool, and what we use that tool for, is a marker for just how far I have come. I teach the incredible power of teamwork-- perhaps the most valuable lesson I have learned. It takes every single person to make a project happen.

These trail systems that I help to build are anchors for both community and recreation. It’s rewarding to recreate on the trails I have built, rewarding to see other people enjoying the trails, and rewarding when people thank you for the work.

I love working on crew—my hands in the dirt alongside crew members and I see myself doing that as long as I can and wherever that takes me, it takes me. I’ve found my love for chainsaws—so many skills I’m stoked to have. What I love about trail building is that it is everywhere – I can take these talents anywhere.

Trails to Tomorrow: Elyssia's Story