Director, Producer, Environmental Educator

Julie (aka "Moonshine")

Reflection from the 2,000 mile mark - " The trail has taught me that I am stronger than I could have ever imagined. Empowerment feels good, but it is also terrifying - I have no excuses anymore. No more reasons to wait, to ignore, to hide.

I had the idea that "nature is medicine" repeating in my mind for the past seven years. I'd understand it in small doses, but it nagged at me constantly. Especially as I sat, depressed and hurt in the concrete jungle that is New York City. Spending these months outside, I have been healed, tested, exposed. The medicine is sweet, sometimes bitter, but always exactly what I need. It comes in the rain, the warm sunshine, the clear streams that wind their way along my path. Visiting with Mother Nature is like communing with an old friend. We can both be ourselves no matter what we're feeling, no matter what it looks like. In her embrace I am wholly free. 

There is a lot of work to be done to find harmony between humanity and the natural world. We are making the planet inhospitable. But luckily, we don't have to face these challenges alone. In the forest the story of the "rugged individual" is proven entirely false. We are all connected, we are never alone.  As we approach the 100 mile wilderness I am trying my very best to meet each day without expectation - open and vulnerable to the magic that surrounds me. My heart is filled with gratitude for this journey that has transformed me so completely."

“And I do not want anymore to be useful, to be docile, to lead children out of the fields into the text of civility, to teach them that they are (they are not)
better than the grass.”
                                    -Mary Oliver

Julie never quite grew out of the phase of childhood where everything inspires the question: “why?”  This, coupled with her fascination of people and culture drew her to New York City after high school. Surrounded by the city that never sleeps, she quickly learned that she mostly just missed the trees.

After undergraduate study in Anthropology, she earned a Master’s in Environmental Conservation Education while working full-time in University administration. Eventually her life grew confined in offices, apartments, and subway cars. After seven years, the grid of gray and beige started feeling very small and so did she. Before embarking on the trail, she left the city for the mountains and her native Virginia soil to begin work at Oak Hart Farm - a family-owned and operated organic vegetable farm along the Shenandoah River. 

Julie is passionate about actively healing the divisions between humans and nature in her own wandering spirit and in solidarity with those drawn to the fence line by the quiet song ever-present in the wind. She is currently the Director & Lead Consultant of Foxwalk Nature Education.