Lucy Pearson—She’s a Winner!

By Ellen Lambeth

Congratulations to Lucy Pearson, 13, the winner of the 2022 Craig Tufts Educational Scholarship!

This scholarship pays for one nature-loving student and an adult family member to attend the Family Nature Summit, a weeklong outdoor education camp.

When Lucy found out she had won, she wondered if it was just a dream. But then she and her dad arrived last summer at the Summit site along the northern California coast. That’s when she got her very first look at a coastal redwood tree. “It was humongous!” she remembers. Above, she investigates the flat needles of a young redwood branch.

Lucy enjoyed the many hikes with the others in her age group. One of the activities she remembers best was a visit to a re-created Yurok village, where the buildings were all made from redwood. “I was surprised to learn that the wood is fire resistant.” She loved hearing the stories told by their Yurok guide about the tribe’s customs.

But Lucy’s favorite activity was the Redwood Sky Walk. It’s a wooden walkway that lets visitors climb higher and higher into the forest until they’re 100 feet above the ground! At left, she leads her group across a swinging bridge. “Maybe I should have been nervous,” Lucy says now. “But all I was thinking was how cool it was to see some trees below me instead of above me. It was a whole new perspective!”

The Summit won’t be Lucy’s last adventure. Back home, she’ll keep investigating nature. She wants to help other children learn to love all sorts of wildlife, even the so-called “scary” ones such as bats, snakes, and spiders. “I want to jump-start their natural curiosity about animals,” she says. “I also want to help protect nature for the kids of the future.”