VMN Statewide Conference 2023

*Grayson Highlands State Park view by Lincoln Gray.*

A few HMNs made it to this year’s VMN Annual Conference September 29- October 1, 2023. Thanks to Lincoln and Scott for sharing about their experiences!

Advantages of the annual VMN conference are guided tours of some remarkable areas of our Commonwealth. So it was in Abingdon. Highlights for us (P & L Gray) were trips up a peak in Hungry Mother State Park, up a couple of pinnacles thru a lovely boreal forest in the spectacular Grayson Highlands State Park, and bird watching in some salt flats (who knew such would exist in SW Va). Amazing to learn that wooly mammoths, mastodons, large scary bears and sloths, and some HUMANS all lived there once. (Glad it wasn’t us, haha). That western ridge-and-valley region is definitely worth more visits.

*Forest at Grayson Highlands State Park. Photo by Lincoln Gray.*

– Lincoln Gray, Cohort VI, October 2023

*Learning about myriapods from Jackson Means at Sugar Hollow Park in Bristol. Photo by Scott Jost*.

Attending the VMN Statewide Conference as a Cohort 8 trainee was a full-on Virginia Master Naturalist experience. As another attendee observed, “What could be better than spending the weekend with a couple of hundred nature nerds?” Having attended numerous academic conferences, the statewide conference was, by far, the friendliest one I have ever attended, and the only one in which hiking boots are the standard footwear.

Highlights for me included meeting VMN colleagues from around the state, learning what they are involved in, and hearing about what their chapters do and how they do it. Outstanding sessions, for me, included a field trip to The Cedars Natural Area Preserve, home to species of arthropods that exist only in single springs or sinkholes within the preserve and nowhere else on Earth, and a mind-blowing keynote on the biogeography of southwest Virginia. I’m already looking forward to next year’s conference and hope other HMNs will consider attending, too.

The photos are from a field trip, “The Hidden Diversity Beneath Our Feet: Millipedes, Centipedes, and Their Relatives” with Jackson Means, a biologist who has identified more than 40 new species of millipedes and centipedes in southwest, Virginia, a world biodiversity hotspot.

– Scott Jost, Cohort 8