Ryan Ghelfi
December 29, 2025
Everyone has a why. The reasons they do what they do and make the choices they make. My “why” for applying to become the next executive director of SBFC back in 2022 was pretty simple: I’d spent many days and nights traversing thousands of miles of Wilderness trails. My experience of Wilderness shaped me in almost every way. And through my travels, I’d observed how bad things had become on so many of our wild trails. I’d experienced the problems firsthand, getting lost, cut up, bruised, and broken following paths shown on the map, but nearly nonexistent in reality. I’d seen the difference that grassroots non-profit groups could make from my time on the board of Siskiyou Mountain Club. By the middle of 2022, I was ready for a challenge in my life and to dig in and do my part to help solve this problem.
Fast forward 3.5 years to today, and my personal views on both the problems and the solutions have deepened and evolved significantly. In hindsight, I see how much I didn’t know when I accepted this role back in 2022. I have been able to learn far more than I ever imagined. During this time period, where almost all I do with my waking hours is think about SBFC and our mission, I’ve discovered that the problems I came here to help solve were actually a means to much larger ends.
Spending time in the Wilderness learning from and working alongside our seasonal staff, Wilderness Ranger Fellows, adult and youth volunteers, I began to realize that the work itself is truly the most important thing we are doing. Of course the outcome, preserving the trails crossing the landscape, is incredibly valuable, but providing employment, opportunity, connection, and meaning to hundreds of individuals across hundreds of hitches… those life-changing experiences are the real game changer.
I have learned that there is no experience quite like being on a Wilderness Crew. I’ve seen it firsthand in the present, and listened to people talk about the early days of the Wilderness Act, when places like the Moose Creek Ranger District had many people living and working in the backcountry season after season. Hearing those people who were there talk about those experiences now, I realize how trails, and maintaining them, are the pathway that creates formative experiences for those engaged in doing the work.
When I was 17 I joined a National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) course for a month of backpacking in the Wind River Range in Wyoming. This was a foundational experience for me. I am grateful for that opportunity and think highly of NOLS. But if I could go back in time, I would tell my younger self to apply to join a Wilderness Trail crew instead. I would have gained just as much outdoor and leadership experience and I also would have learned more through the work and directly contributed to something much larger than myself.
My personal “why” for doing what I do every day has evolved. I am so grateful to each person, each story, and each moment that has helped me see both the problems and the opportunities that lie in front of us more clearly today than I could have imagined just a few short years ago. I do this work for the hundreds of lives we directly impact each season through employment, volunteer opportunities, and youth expeditions. Their work reverberates and in turn changes the lives of each person lucky enough to walk down a trail after them. This is creating and sustaining a passionate wilderness cohort, of which I'm lucky to be part of.
Our future is bright at SBFC. Our opportunities are limitless. So many people are excited beyond measure to work in the Selway-Bitterroot and the Frank Church-River of No Return. We are poised to play our role in larger and more meaningful ways. I hope you’ll consider joining us for the first time, or investing more deeply in this movement to open pathways for people to discover and steward these public lands. Together, there is no end to what we can accomplish. As more people join this organization and support our mission, the future is one in which every person has the opportunity to care about and care for the Wildest Place in the Lower 48.
Thank you for coming on this journey with me, and thank you to all of those who have helped to direct and shape our course at the Selway Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation. Each of you makes a difference, bigger than you know.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments. Reply to this email if you’d like!
