REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
As technology – and its tendency to isolate people physically – has become more common, parents’ interest in getting young people involved with environmental stewardship has increased.
AmeriCorps member Brian Arthur uses a pulley system to move a rock as the Greenagers crew builds a retaining wall on Tom Ball Mountain in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
| Great Barrington, Mass.
The sharp pounding of a sledgehammer echoes through the forest, joining the music of woodpeckers drilling in trees.
Brian Arthur is shattering large rocks into bits, or “crush,” along a trail on Tom Ball Mountain in western Massachusetts. His task is not only to help his crew form a retaining wall to protect some wetlands abutting the trail. It’s also to learn how to put teens in the thrall of the outdoors.
Mr. Arthur is serving on this bright April day with the nonprofit Greenagers as part of an AmeriCorps grant. He will use the skills he learns on the mountain to help lead paid crews of high schoolers doing similar tasks this summer. He says he hopes the teens have experiences like the ones he had as a child “falling in love with nature.”
Greenagers, based in Berkshire County, aims to instill in teens the value of environmental stewardship. Its biggest and longest-running program employs crews of local high schoolers who help maintain trails, supervised by college-age leaders like Mr. Arthur. The crews do work such as clearing ground for new trails, spreading gravel for accessible paths, and removing invasive plants from community lands, in addition to undertaking more technical projects involving stonework.
Today’s crew consists of three Greenagers staff members working alongside three AmeriCorps members, including Mr. Arthur.
Elia Del Molino, conservation director at Greenagers, is the head of the operation. To him, working on a trail crew is transformative. The entire experience is “just team building,” he says. “I mean, move this giant stone, build a [stone] staircase. You overcome those obstacles.”
As technology – and its tendency to isolate people physically – has become more common, Mr. Del Molino says interest in Greenagers has increased. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he regularly received calls from parents hoping to get their kids out of the house and into the woods.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/StaffElia Del Molino is Greenagers’ conservation director.
The nonprofit also teaches young people the skill of communication.
“Group work is the type of thing that everybody rolls their eyes at in high school,” says Will Conklin, Greenagers’ founder and executive director. But, out in the beautiful nature of the Berkshires, something special happens. Teens “come together toward a common goal,” he notes.
He also points out that many parents whose kids are involved with Greenagers have told him, “My kid didn’t really want to go outside, or know what to do outside, and now they can’t get enough of it.”
Sam Del Molino, wearing a helmet and blue overalls, works with Mr. Arthur to slip a large stone into place on the half-built retaining wall. Sam is Elia’s younger brother and Greenagers’ conservation manager.
“Look at this; it’s perfect,” says Sam Del Molino, surveying their work. Mr. Arthur quips, “And no one lost a finger.”
Mr. Arthur is working toward a bachelor’s degree in environmental science or ecology. He started college in 2019, but his courses went remote in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic. He didn’t handle it well.
He and his roommates drifted apart as they sought to get away from campus, where the atmosphere was “not hopeless, but just not hopeful,” he says. Syllabuses began to consist of videos instead of in-person instruction, and Mr. Arthur lost motivation to do well. He loves learning when he’s tromping through the woods, collecting samples of decomposing matter, or measuring the health of salamanders.
Mr. Arthur says his mental health was affected. He eventually found himself in his fourth year of college without enough credits to graduate, and a scholarship running out. He joined AmeriCorps hoping to use money from the program’s education award to finish his degree at a different college.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/StaffA Greenagers crew builds a retaining wall near a trail on private land on Tom Ball Mountain.
He started working with Greenagers last fall. But the organization lost its AmeriCorps contract after the Trump administration terminated $400 million in grants to AmeriCorps on April 25. Greenagers offered to pay the AmeriCorps members to work there through the end of their term in mid-August. As Mr. Arthur looks ahead to resuming college in the fall, he says his time with Greenagers has been a steppingstone to “a more independent, leadership-driven position.”
The crew is given a problem, and “then we come up with an idea for what to do. And then we do it,” Mr. Arthur notes with pride.
The Del Molino brothers are “there to guide us instead of just direct us,” he adds.
Elia Del Molino, for example, teaches Mr. Arthur to drill holes in two rocks to attach them with rebar. The rock drill plugs into a bright red Honda generator, which crew members carry from their supply area on a wooden platform they affectionately call “Gurney Sanders” and “Ernie the Gurney.”
While Mr. Arthur settles into the task, Elia Del Molino watches from a few feet away. Rock dust rises into the clear air as the steady buzz of the generator reverberates through the trees.
Founded as a program in 2007, Greenagers has grown dramatically, with more parents seeking to enroll their kids and more community members requesting its services than ever before. It is funded through government grants, donations, and money from clients such as municipalities and land trusts. The community recognizes that Greenagers offers solutions to some of the region’s most pressing issues, says Mr. Conklin.
William “Smitty” Pignatelli, who represented parts of the Berkshires in the Massachusetts State House for 22 years, says a resident once told him, “Smitty, our natural beauty is more valuable than an oil well in Saudi Arabia.” Mr. Pignatelli has been aware of Greenagers’ work to preserve this natural beauty for the past 10 or 15 years and has attended many of its events. He was “able to secure a state earmark in our state budget” for the group for each of the past few years, he notes.
Jacob Kulyniak started at Greenagers as a summer crew member during high school and plans to pursue a career in conservation. Greenagers “broke me out of my shell,” he says, noting that he found building a stone staircase especially rewarding. “I realized ... this is going to be here for the remainder of my life, probably, if not longer,” he says.
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Last edited 7/22/2025 7:03:19 PM
