In 1953, The Schenck Family purchased the 3,400 acres now called Green River Preserve as a place to spend weekends and summers fly fishing, hiking, and exploring. As a child Sandy Schenck was fortunate to learn the lore of the Green River Valley from his parents and the mountain people who had lived in there for generations. From these memorable teachers, he learned a reverence for the land, a sense of valley history, and the pleasure of outdoor living. These kind and gentle mountain folks were his counselors and he their camper.
As a teenager Sandy was fortunate to attend Camp Flintlock not far from his family’s land. In that summer, camp became his compass for life. In 1987, Sandy left a career in the business world to fulfill a lifelong dream of sharing the magic of the Green River Valley with children through an innovative, natural science-oriented summer camp. This would be a camp unlike any other, in that it would offer children a chance to connect with nature, to learn about land stewardship, to practice sustainable living, and to grow as young leaders. For Sandy, the reasons for starting a summer camp were rooted in childhood memories, in lessons passed on from one generation to the next and in the simple pleasure of sharing the wonder of nature with young people. In 2006, Sandy and his wife, Missy, put 2,600 acres of Green River Preserve in a conservation easement. This action will preserve the land for perpetuity.
Over the years, Sandy began to feel that all children should be connected to nature, not just the ones going to summer camp at Green River Preserve. Through his summer camp model a new non-profit, Muddy Sneakers was born. Now in its tenth year, Muddy Sneakers (“teaching children the joy of learning outside”) serves schools in multiple counties in both Western North Carolina and the Piedmont. This Fall Muddy Sneakers will open a regional office on the North Carolina coast.
Sandy is an economics major from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds an MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. He is a founder and executive director of the Green River Preserve summer camp. He is also a founder and original Board President of Hickory Day School, in Hickory, North Carolina. He serves on the Headwaters Board of Trout Unlimited where he helped launch Summer on the Fly, a program to encourage fly fishing in summer camps. He and his wife have six children with whom they share their love of the outdoors. Everyone in their family finds that going away to camp continues to be the best summer adventure there is. It is a tradition that will happily carry on for generations.
Note: I grew up in a fly fishing family. Some of my earliest memories are of trout streams and fly rods. Much of my life and even my career has been oriented around fly fishing, a selfish, but surprisingly wise motivation. Becoming a fly fisherman is one of my highest educational achievements. It has made me better, happier, wiser and more fulfilled. I love to fly fish with my children who share three generations of fly fishing DNA. One of my great joys in life is now teaching new generations the sport, lore and mindfulness of fly fishing. I often call fly fishing aquatic theology, and I mean it.
