Photographs were taken by Greg while enjoying the great outdoors and working on his films.
After leaving Vermont, I intended to play hockey at St. Olaf’s College in Minnesota. But my heart wasn’t in the kind of hockey they played there, so I focused mostly on schoolwork. While working my way though the second year of an environmental studies degree, I realized that, although the school was good, I had become disconnected from the environment I was supposed to be learning how to care for and protect. I decided to spend a semester with NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) before transferring to Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. This decision raised concerns that perhaps I was going backward, that I was digressing from some road to success as defined by financial gain. That has never been my most important goal, so I left Minnesota and moved to Colorado. Although I live in Colorado during the school year, I have returned to Vermont for the past three summers and worked with the Green Mountain Club. This past summer I had the opportunity to work as a caretaker at Mt. Mansfield’s Taft Lodge. The lodge serves as a dry overnight stop for Long Trail thru-hikers and overnight backpackers. It is the oldest lodge on the oldest long-distance hiking trail in North America. During my six-week stay near the top of Mt. Mansfield, I began work on a short documentary about what I think it means to hike in Vermont. The film, Walking In, was a way to test my abilities in filmmaking as well as to show viewers a side of Vermont that is rarely seen. The location of Taft Lodge offered a unique perspective of the mountain. For example, most thru-hikers spend a month on the trail but may see the sunset only a handful of times. I was fortunate to see it almost every night, because the lodge sat only a third of a mile from the ridgeline. Walking In is an environmental film not because it is empirically informative, but because it attempts to connect the viewer with the environment. Many of the environmental problems we face today can be attributed to a lack of awareness and respect for the environment. This is not to say that these problems are caused intentionally by individuals; rather, many people are not connected with the environment they affect, and if they felt more of a connection to it, they would begin to respect and care for it more. The environment affects us; we affect the environment. It is a cycle that many don’t regularly think about and the reason I make environmental films.
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w i nter 2012