This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.
Meghan Tabacek has been with Trail Mix, Inc. for four years now, and she’s done a lot of the dirty work. The nonprofit has maintained many of Juneau’s beloved trails since 1993, and she says the crews look a lot different than they used to.
Volunteers can join in on trail work each Saturday this month. This weekend, volunteers are meeting at Black Bear Trail from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Listen:
Meghan Tabacek: I’m Megan Tabacek, and I’m the executive director at Trail Mix, Inc.
Our season starts in May, and I started in April. Luckily, I had been working with Ryan for a long time. I’ve been at Trail Mix for four years now, so I had a running start compared to other directors, but it definitely was a busy time.
Trail mix is a very interesting kind of nonprofit. You got to know how to do the trail work, but then there’s also, like, all of the meat of running a nonprofit.
I actually was never supposed to work at Trail Mix, and then the pandemic happened, and one of the few jobs that was happening was trail work, and I’d always really wanted to do it, but I thought of — saw myself more as a guide. But then pandemic, I applied. I absolutely loved it.
At the end of my summer, I was going into my senior year at UAS in the environmental studies program and needed an internship, so I begged Ryan O’Shaughnessy, who was the former director, for an internship. I got one, and then I just never really left.
I loved learning — building trails is really fun. Learning about why and how we build trails is really cool. So it was just really fun, learning about all these inner workings and what goes on behind the scenes just to make a half-mile stretch of trail better. And so I was hooked. I’ve really worn all the hats there is to wear at Trail Mix.
Almost every single weekend this entire summer, we’ve had a volunteer group out on the trails, and it’s really cool to see how much our community loves our trails and wants to spend a sunny or rainy Saturday on the trails with us.
I am not the buffest person in the world, and I was really nervous about that when I first started working for Trail Mix — and this is actually something that’s been really, really cool over the past five years at Trail Mix — is you used to have to be pretty buff. I mean, it wasn’t a straight up requirement, but in years prior, we hired just people who are great at trail work and were really strong.
And then a couple years ago, during the pandemic, we made this shift of saying, “What if we just hired really good people and taught them how to be trail workers?” Because, turns out, you can teach good people how to be good trail workers, but you can’t teach good trail workers how to be good people.
So if you were to look at photos of Trail Mix 10 years ago, it’s primarily 25 to 30 year old white men — maybe a couple women, very infrequently. That was actually one of the reasons I almost didn’t apply to Trail Mix, is because I didn’t see any women in the photos.
And over the past five years, you know, we’ve seen a huge swap in our demographics. This year, we have more women and nonbinary people working at Trail Mix than men.
One of the great things about trail work is there’s always workarounds. You know, you can’t lift something up with your hands? Ask a partner, and maybe you’ll do a team lift. Something’s too big for the whole team to lift? We’re gonna set up a grip hoist and use mechanical advantage to lift this thing. So there’s really all sorts of workarounds. And, oh, you’re not comfortable with chainsaws? That’s fine. There’s always other tasks. A lot of tasks go into making a trail happen. And so there’s always a place for everyone on the trail.
