Blog Archives

New Hike Leader

3/31/2025

Congratulations to Lavern Beachy for completing his hike leader training. We had a great time joining him on his two training hikes on the Whetstone Ridge Trail and Mills Creek Reservoir trails. Lavern is known for his exploration of new trails and his long hike adventures. He enjoys tackling sections of trails such as the Great Eastern Trail and the Arizona Trail. Lavern is also known for his welcoming and friendly personality. Working as a busy farmer, we are always glad when he has time to join us. We look forward to Lavern leading on future hikes!

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Sierra Club Event at JMU

3/16/2025

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The Shenandoah Group of the Sierra Club is excited to co-sponsor the following events at JMU.

On April 2 and 3, Joshua Trey Barnett an award-winning scholar and teacher from the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences and Penn State will give a public talk ("Ghost Trees of the Shenandoah National Park and the Ethics of Care") and facilitate a workshop ("Beyond Hope and Despair: Cultivating Ecological Feelings for Earthly Coexistence"). Details on these events are below and in the attached flyer.

Joshua is the author of Mourning in the Anthropocene: Ecological Grief and Earthly Coexistence (2022) and the editor of Ecological Feelings: A Rhetorical Compendium (2025),

PUBLIC Talk: Wednesday, April 2, 5:30-6:45,
ENGO 1301 James Madison University

Ghost Trees of Shenandoah National Park and the Ethics of Care

How do people come to care about threatened and endangered species? In this talk, I transport readers to Shenandoah National Park, where most of the eastern hemlocks died in the early 2000s after the hemlock woolly adelgid arrived. Although hemlocks survive in isolated stands, many dead hemlocks still pepper the landscape. Building on new materialist theories of rhetoric, I examine how these so-called ghost trees move people to care for them. In particular, I show how dead and dying hemlocks make ethical claims upon those who encounter them.

WORKSHOP: Thursday, April 3, 2:20-3:35,
King Hall 259, James Madison University

Beyond Hope and Despair: Cultivating Ecological Feelings for Earthly Coexistence

We live in a time of interlocking social and ecological crises, and your workshop host wants to know how you feel about it. In this workshop, participants will explore a variety of ecological feelings beyond the clichéd hope-despair dichotomy. We will consider how ecological feelings like anger, apathy, care, fear, grief, joy, optimism, and rage influence us. In doing so, we will reflect on how our feelings motivate our thoughts, judgments, and actions. More importantly, we will consider how we might collectively cultivate those feelings that lead to a more just and caring earthly coexistence.

Click this link to view the flyer for the event:
barnett_visit_flyer_revised_07_07_25.pdf

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