Bios for United Mountain Defense Volunteers
Summer Interns
fern Greenleaf - Summer Intern 2009 fern is a senior environmental science and English student at Warren Wilson College. During the summer of 2009 she worked on the 5th edition of the Tennessee Mountain Defender.
fern is an eldritch lass who loves to wander alone in the woods for days, writing poetry and contemplating the beautiful curiosities of this world. She especially loves creatures as odd as herself, such as pangolins and nudibranchs. Although fern has a feeling that she’s been pixie-led before, she has yet to knowingly spy a faerie creature.
Sarah McManus - Summer Intern 2008 & 2009
Sarah McManus was born in the North Carolina Sandhills and raised in the foothills of the Piedmont. She started turning over rocks in creeks and poking things with sticks at a young age, and continues to do so (just with bigger nets and more paperwork). She is working on her B.A. in Ecology at New College of Florida in Sarasota, and tends to hang out with the swamp activists during the winter. Sarah has volunteered as a UMD intern for Summer 2008 and 2009, mainly focusing on the water monitoring program. She's also easily distracted by poster-making, graphic design, scientific illustration, weeding the garden, fermentation projects, and duct-tape-smokestack-costume construction.Michelle Mockbee - Board Member
In 2005 Michelle started volunteering with the newly founded non-profit United Mountain Defense. She has given hours of dedicated work in the field and administratively, and will continue to do so. She lives in North Eastern Tennessee where she is working to diversify entrepreneurial options for coalfield residents. She loves her dog Junebug and cat Roonie-Doonie, and dedicates all of her hard-work to her family who has helped to mold and shape the young woman she has become.