Even though born in DC, Robin considers herself a lifelong Virginian, albeit one who loves to travel. “Traveling is similar to being out in nature, it’s just another type of discovery,” she explained. She spent two years in France after high school, where she lived with her aunt and uncle and attended the Alliance Francaise and the Sorbonne. A third year aboard was spent in art school in Florence where she worked in sculpture.  “Living aboard was very reasonable back then and the dollar went far, particularly with student credentials,” she noted. She returned to the States and obtained her degree from the University of Maryland in anthropology and comparative literature in 1969. “And one of my goals was to make enough money to make the next trip to Europe and later to get to more parts of the world,” she stated, “and I have seen a great deal of it, all wonderfully fascinating.”
 
Robin has lived in a number of places in Virginia, including Alexandria, where she was a travel agent as well as worked with antiques. She also lived in in Fairfax, Marshall, and Luray. She and her husband settled in Rappahannock in 2004. She became a certified Master Naturalist in 2009. When asked why she initially applied for the class, she said “I saw the ad for the class and it sounded like fun to me!” She has been having fun ever since, as her over 1,900 hours of volunteer service attest.
 
When and how did you become interested in nature and the natural world? While Robin spent a lot of time during her childhood in nature, it was with horses. She also taught horseback riding for many years. “You see a lot of nature when you’re riding a horse,” she explained. Since becoming a Master Naturalist, she has found her niche – invasive plant removal. She has long been interested in native plants and became concerned about how invasive plants such as garlic mustard and autumn olive were affecting Virginia’s native flora. “The more I learned about invasives, the more I saw them as I drove around Virginia. It depressed me seeing trees along roads being killed by nonnative vines.”
 
Describe what you do on your property to support a healthy ecosystem.
Robin and her husband Bill have 25 acres in Rappahannock. Their neighbors raise cows and also cut hay on Robin’s land. While her husband “loves to mow grass” she insisted on a big pollinator garden where she plants a large variety of native plants, including native host plants for butterflies and native nectar sources for butterflies and bees. Trees on her property include oaks, elms, hollies, and nut trees; shrubs include dogwoods, viburnums, spicebush and wafer ash; flowering plants include mountain mints, common violets, asters, mallow, indigo and wild senna. She encourages using locally native plants, if possible.  “In doing this” she says, “you will enjoy most of our native wildlife. They are adapted to the native flora.”    She recommends Douglas Tallamy’s book Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants as an excellent source for good plants to use.
 
Robin doesn’t cut down the plants in her pollinator garden when they are finished flowering. Instead, she leaves the seed heads and debris in the garden to provide food for birds during the winter, which also provides cover and haven for toads, skinks and other wildlife.   “The birds own my garden, not me,” she stated.  An example of “birds rule”: Robin planted pussytoes (Antennaria) in her pollinator garden specifically because it is host plant for the American Lady butterfly. She was delighted to see multiple caterpillars on her pussytoe plants that season. “Then a family of catbirds found them – and those little assassins ate every single one!”
 
Robin and her husband have spent a great deal of time removing invasive plants from the wooded edge to their hay field. “When we take out the invasive plants, native shrubs and then trees come up. It is fun to see and learn from what grows naturally.” They now have hickories and oaks and many other species that had been previously crowded out by invasives.
 
What is the most amazing thing you have experienced in nature?
“I had always wanted to see a Giant Swallowtail butterfly”, Robin shared, “as they are the largest butterfly in North America.” [Note: Giant Swallowtails are 4 – 6 inches in size.] “While these butterflies are most commonly seen in Florida, where they are considered a serious pest by citrus farmers,” she continued, “they are occasionally seen further north including here in Virginia.”
 
To entice this butterfly to her farm, Robin included one of the Giant Swallowtail’s favorite food – wafer ash (Ptelea trifoliate) – in her pollinator garden. While walking her dog one morning “a Giant Swallowtail flapped by my head and set down on my wafer ash, where it laid eggs on top of the leaves.” Robin explained that most butterflies lay their eggs on the underside of host plant leaves to hide the emerging caterpillars from hungry predators. Giant Swallowtails, however, have evolved a different way to deter predators. Their caterpillars look unappetizingly like bird droppings. Robin had her husband build a cage around the plant where the Giant Swallowtail had laid her eggs, in recognition that the mortality rate of butterfly larvae is enormous. “This was in July,” she said. “Three caterpillars survived and pupated in late summer. We took them into our garage, where they were dormant until the following May, when they emerged and flew away. I got to watch the whole process from egg-laying to mature butterfly.”

Going from a career as a banker to becoming a Master Naturalist might seem like a major life shift – but for Dera Cooper, it was a natural progression that reflects her lifelong love of animals and being outside in nature. Born in Dallas, Texas, Dera and her family moved around the United States as they followed her father’s career as an engineer. Connecticut was the last place she lived with her family before getting married and starting a family of her own. Her career as a banker included stints with JPMorgan and Bank of America, where she primarily worked with large nonprofits – including several conservation-oriented firms – as well as colleges and universities. When she and her husband David, who also had a career in banking, retired in 2016 they moved from Chevy Chase, Maryland to Madison County.
 
When and how did you become interested in nature and the natural world?
Dera has always loved animals. “There have always been dogs in my life”, she said. Like many girls, she also wanted to have a horse but to her disappointment, that never happened. Her interest in mammals continued when she became a Master Naturalist. One of her first volunteer activities was with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI), where she drove a 15-passenger van that took visitors around the SCBI facility in Front Royal. She learned a lot about different endangered species and had the incredible opportunity to see an annual exam of one of their clouded leopards. [Note: This cat is considered a threatened species with a decreasing population trend. Since 90% of what is known about clouded leopards comes from research on captive populations, SCBI’s collaboration with international partners is providing critical information to efforts to protect this threatened animal.]
 
Describe what you do on your property to support a healthy ecosystem.
Dera and her husband moved to Virginia in 2016, where they brought a 54-acre parcel. “Part of the land was originally a tree farm,” Dera explained. The owner had planted a lot of different trees (mostly non-native) that he liked but in no particular order. There was also a significant amount of non-native invasive species on the property such as ailanthus, autumn olive, and bittersweet. Dera and her husband initially focused on removing plants that threatened their pond’s dam. “We have worked each year to remove the invasives and let the land ‘do its own thing’,” she explained. Some land is still in hay production and they have a good variety of pines and hardwoods such as hickory and oak. They have observed many mammals, including foxes, groundhogs, and in their first year, two young bears that walked up their driveway while they were sitting on their front porch (they moved inside right away). “There is a natural stand of blue sedge in the front yard that we don’t mow,” Dera explained. “We leave it for the birds.”
 
What is the most amazing thing you have experienced in nature?
When Dera and David lived in Maryland, they had a weekend house on the Eastern Shore. “I was standing outside looking over the water and a bald eagle barreled down from the sky, caught a humongous snake, and flew off. It was truly breathtaking” she said.
 
As the VMH Coordinator for ORMN, what would you like our members to know?
When they first moved to Virginia, Dera became friendly with her neighbor who encouraged her to become a Master Naturalist. As a member of ORMN’s Class 8, Dera took to heart the request made during class that member support in administrative functions was critical to the continuation of the chapter. So when the VMN Coordinator at the time stepped down, she accepted the responsibility and has been in this position for three years. “It is so important for each of the members to help with administrative tasks,” she said. “And to make a pitch for my area, you can put in your time in the comfort of your own home and earn volunteer hours really quickly!”
 
Dera described the importance of reporting volunteer hours, particularly volunteer hours for our State sponsors. “Our sponsors need this information to justify their involvement with us, which sometimes includes funding.” She continued, “If members don’t record volunteer hours, ORMN doesn’t get credit for all the time we collectively invest in our sponsors and partners.”
 
At the end of each calendar year Dera’s team “scrubs the data” to make sure everything is accurate. They check each entry for correctness and consistent language. They then compile it for inclusion in ORMN’s annual report which is submitted to the State VMN office. The State VMN compiles the data from chapters across the State and submits it to the various sponsors and partners.
 
Dera and her team are always ready to help any member who has problems with entering information into the VMN system. “The system is set up to allow you to go back and easily correct something you may have entered incorrectly.” The Volunteer Management System is being updated this coming year and Dera hopes it will be easier for members to use. She also hopes that members will take her plea to heart.  “Your volunteer hours are so valuable!” she said. “We want to be sure that our sponsors and partners know of the exceptional contributions made by the members of Old Rag Master Naturalists and you are recognized for all your hard work.”
 
Her ending request: “Let’s make sure VMN, our sponsors and our partners recognize how much we value them by documenting the many, many hours of support we give them each year.”
 
Interviewed by Charlene Uhl, November 13, 2020
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Carolyn Smith holds many positions in the Old Rag Master Naturalist chapter: citizen scientist, educator, committee chair, mentor, and a voice for natural habitats in Virginia. She was interviewed from her unique homestead that is a living example of how a cattle ranch can be transformed into a vibrant natural habitat that supports native flora and fauna.
 
When and how did you become interested in nature and the natural world?
Carolyn, a member of the ORMN class of 2015, has been interested in the natural world since early childhood. “My father and mother took me camping and hiking from a young age. I was in Girl Scouts. I was always outdoors,” she says. She believes her love of the natural world came from her father (a birder) and mother (a botanist) who passed their genes on to her. Her father in particular was always pointing out the rhythms of nature. He appreciated the spiritual dimensions of nature and considered it his cathedral.
 
Growing up as an Air Force “brat”, Carolyn lived throughout the US and abroad. Born in Tripoli, Libya, she lived with the family in Bangkok and Moscow.  During the two years her family lived in Moscow she attended a local Russian high school where she learned to speak Russian with a Moscow accent.  This in turn led to a career as an interpreter, much of which she spent in Geneva at the nuclear arms control talks between the US and Russia.  From there she went to the Sudan to work in a refugee camp, and later settled in the San Francisco Bay Area and had a second career in the non-profit world. 
 
Describe what you do on your property to support a healthy ecosystem.
When she was 15 years old and her father was stationed in the DC area, her parents started looking around for a piece of land in the country. In 1965 they found the 129-acre parcel of land in Madison County where Carolyn now lives. The land was an old family farm that then was used to raise cattle. Over time her parents transformed the landscape to one that is now 80% forest, includes three manmade ponds, marshy areas, and meandering paths through the woods dotted with native wildflowers. She remembers helping her parents heel in 20,000 pine seedlings, which now tower 90–100 feet.
 
Carolyn continues to add native plants, shrubs and trees to her land and will soon begin a cost-sharing project from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) to install riparian buffers along the streams that run through the property.  This will involve taking 14 acres out of agricultural production and planting trees and wildflower meadows.
 
She has also invested significant time over the last 20 years in eradicating invasive plants, including autumn olive (Elaeagnus umbellate), Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), mile-a-minute (Persicaria perfoliata), Japanese stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum) and tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima).  Her most enduring nemesis is garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), which she calls “particularly pestilential” because it can quickly and thoroughly take over a wooded area. This noxious weed can produce thousands of seeds each year which remain viable in the soil up for to 10 years.  There used to be huge stands of garlic mustard in her woods but she has made great headway after years of compulsively pulling up, bagging and hauling it out of the woods, both on her land and (with permission) that of her neighbors.  
Carolyn is also on the lookout for invasive plants that are newly emerging threats to natives. She has found two on her land -- mulberry weed (Fatoua villosa) and incised fumewort (Corydalis incisa).  The fumewort flowers not only in spring but also in fall, and she’s trying to keep it from enlarging the  foothold it has already gained on her property.
 
What is the most amazing thing you have experienced in nature?
Carolyn shared two different experiences that reflect her appreciation of the expansiveness of nature. When she lived in California, she used to backpack with friends in Yosemite National Park.  She was awed by the “grand scale” of nature when the group would climb Half Dome, which rises 8,839 feet above sea level and has a 360-degree view.  “After the physical exertion required to get to the peak, the view was awesome, inspiring and a truly spiritual experience,” she says.

​She compares that to her other amazing experience, which is her 4-year study of the life cycle of the monarch butterfly as part of the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project. She described the day-by-day observations she makes, seeing this insect go from a tiny egg to an adult that flies from here to Mexico. Carolyn explained it gave her a new appreciation for living things beyond humans: their constant effort to ensure survival by avoiding predation, metamorphosis into a chrysalis, then emergence as a winged creature capable of traveling over 2,000 miles.

As Chair of ORMN’s Project Committee, what would you like our members to know?
Carolyn resisted becoming involved in administrative duties when she first became a member. She remembers former ORMN president Don Hearl saying “No one joins a Master Naturalist chapter to do administrative work but without it we can’t do what we joined to do – support and conserve nature.  So please consider joining the Board or a committee.”  Heeding his words, when the chapter’s first Projects Committee chair left her position two years ago Carolyn took her place.  She has enjoyed working with the other committee members and getting to know Board members.  She says there are individual perks as well, such as interacting with VMN people statewide and attending leadership workshops.
 
Carolyn views herself as a steward of her land. It took her family years to restore their property to a natural habitat that supports native animals, birds and insects. She accepts the responsibility to maintain and improve this vibrant environment. She continues to be enthralled with the mystery of nature and sees the doorway to learning as exciting and inspirational. “Natures soothes my spirit and fills my soul,” she says. “Like my father, nature is my cathedral where I feel closest to the infinite.”
 
Interviewed by Charlene Uhl, October 24, 2020

Have you ever looked at your land – be it a small garden, a large corner lot, a hay field, or whatever your spot on earth is and wondered: could I do something different here that would be beautiful, encourage butterflies, bees, birds and other animals to come? 

​This month’s Spotlight on Our Members features two Master Naturalists who have transformed a part of their land into a vibrant, colorful meadow that is filled with guests – plants, insects and animals - from nature. One member had a hay field and the other a portion of land that was not being used for any particular purpose. Read their stories of how they transformed these areas into meadows and their advice and lessons learned on how you could do it, too!

 Of the current 77 members of the Old Rag Master Naturalist (ORMN) chapter, Jack Price stands out in many ways – not the least of which is that he has earned over 6,500 volunteer hours since becoming a member in 2008. Jack was interviewed from his 10-acre homestead on Hazel Mountain, which abuts his beloved Shenandoah National Park.
 
How and when did you become interested in nature and the natural world?
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During his childhood in Connecticut on the Long Island Sound, Jack and friends would explore the tide pools at low tide, marvel at the storms that came in over the water, explore astronomy in the nighttime sky, and delight in walking through the then-wooded areas to find different birds and other forest wildlife. He thought he would grow up to work in a science field or an area related to nature. But his math and science teachers weren’t all that engaging “which reinforced the significant impact that teachers have on their students.” He ended up getting a BA in history and political science.
 
After serving four years in the Air Force, with a tour of duty in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, Jack began his lifelong career in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. This included working in human resource management at the VA Hospital in North Hampton, Massachusetts and at VA headquarters in Washington DC. He retired as head of HR policy for the VA hospital system.
 
Jack’s fascination with nature was reignited when he worked in the DC area. He became a member of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club and explored much of Shenandoah National Park in his free time. This led to him becoming a member of the first ORMN class in 2007. He was a charter member of the ORMN chapter when it was officially established in 2008 and became its first president.  He subsequently served as Chair of the chapter’s education committee and as a member of its board of directors. 
 
The Virginia Master Naturalist program is supervised by the state coordinator and a Steering Committee made up of representatives of the state agencies that sponsor the program.  In 2014 the Steering Committee was expanded with the addition of four representatives from local chapters around the state.  Jack was one of four master naturalists appointed to serve in this important role and remains on the Steering Committee to this day.