By Elsa Baudry-Confalone
2026 Summer Conservation Apprentice

Usually, when your mother wakes you up early on a Saturday morning, you resent her for it—but eventually go along with what she asked. Nearly five years ago, my mom did exactly that and sent me across the street with a shovel and loppers. I assumed I would spend the morning cutting back knotweed along the small, wooded lake in the middle of my New Rochelle neighborhood. I had joined seasonal cleanups there before, but this morning was different.

I was directed to a corner of the 14-acre park where I had never worked before. There, I found neighbors gathered with Westchester Land Trust staff, including then-Preserve Manager John Zeiger. He explained that WLT had been approached by the Friends of Glenwood Lake Park to help protect two undeveloped parcels beside the lake. One was the ground beneath our feet.

Over the next few years, I helped transform that hilly parcel, once crowded with debris and knotweed. Today, it holds a small native plant nursery and a trail connecting it to the rest of the park. Watching the land change showed me what can happen when neighbors come together, share what they know, and keep showing up to care for a place.

In my sophomore year of high school, a conversation about college and what inspired me most brought me back to WLT. I remembered not just the land we had cared for, but the patient teaching that gave our community the skills and confidence to care for this special place on our own. That experience helped lead me to study natural resources management at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

Finding this apprenticeship helped me answer an important question: What more can I do for my community? Through WLT’s community programs, I discovered how much I love teaching. While co-leading a stream exploration at Hunter Brook Preserve, I watched families search the water for tiny aquatic creatures and begin to understand what those animals can tell us about the health of a stream. Their curiosity will stay with me, along with the satisfaction of continuing the cycle of education and inspiration that first shaped me.

Looking back, those Saturday mornings no longer feel like chores. They helped me discover how much I value bringing people together to learn from and care for the natural places around them—and that’s a lesson I’ll carry wherever I go next.

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