Trails Manager for Department of Parks, Recreation & Community Facilities
A volunteer survey administered last year suggested that a half million patrons visited James River Park. This year, employees and volunteers are certain that number has grown. Although nature has a daily hand in making the James River Park System such a dazzling beauty, each member of its small staff and every volunteer is integral to its well-being.
Nathan Burrell has been with the park for six years. Christy Everson, Marketing Specialist for the Department of Parks, Recreation & Community Facilities says, “We think Nathan is terrific. He is so enthusiastic about his work and completely dedicated to the James River Park System and making sure that we have the best trails possible. In fact, the park has twice been recognized with awards for ‘Best Urban Trails’ by the park’s users in BlueRidge Outdoors magazine. He is a great role model for Richmond’s urban youth.”
Nathan grew up on the Rappahannock River and was an Essex Country lifeguard as a teen. He graduated Virginia Commonwealth University in 2003 with a degree in Parks and Recreation Management. Today he owns a home in Fulton Hill, where he lives with his wife, Tracey Brockwell, 32, a certified Montessori teacher, and their daughter Zora, 6. The couple is expecting a boy, who they plan to name Khalil. When he’s able to get time off, Nathan admits, “I’m usually in the park somewhere -with my daughter and wife, swimming around in the river, tubing down the river, canoeing the river, mountain biking, hiking the trails. I’m an outdoors person. I love being outside.”
Nathan took a break in the middle of a long day to talk to Urban Views Weekly.
New Look at Nature
“I absolutely love my job. I get to be very responsive to the community and the community’s needs while also working to make our community better, which is adding to the quality of life here. It’s very hard work. I work ten or twelve hours moving large rocks, dragging VW sized rocks through the woods, operating large equipment, talking to various civic groups… But I love it.”
“[I enjoy] Being able to allay pre-conceived fears. Maybe it’s a trail that’s proposed to go behind a group of houses. It can be perceived as, ‘What if someone tried to use the trail to come into my house?’ Statistics show that’s not going to happen. Working through issues like that, allaying fears of environmental impacts, things like that. Trails truly are this new ground. There’ve always been hiking trails. But there hasn’t always been the interest or the understanding of the true design of the trail. It’s really a field that’s evolved over the last thirty to forty years. It’s relatively new compared to other recreational activities. So being able to relate specific information about various design and ways that design overall impacts maintenance and erosion are very key to what I do.”
Preserving Resources
“What we have here in the Richmond area, along the fall line of the James is very unique, not only to the city, to Virginia, to the East Coast, but to the world over. We’re very unique in what we’re doing here. Having a little bit of wilderness in the city has really changed not only the dynamic within the city, but how other cities, other localities are looking at their resources. They’re now looking at what we’re doing here, as an alternative to a paved path along the river.”
“We offer a way to get a very high impact as far as recreational value for a very low input. We don’t offer a lot of amenities as far as large picnic areas, we don’t offer bathroom facilities, these type of things. We try to focus more on the individual user, the small group, and muscle power recreation – doing things that you have to physically get out there and do. You can run the rapids millions of times and you’re never going to devalue or destroy that rapid. You’re able to go out, use the trails, the variation in pathways. We have everything from large service roads, which are excellent for kids and beginner bikers, to very advanced single track trails. We offer everything in between there.”
“We’re centered around muscle-powered, centered around adventure sports that you’re able to do over and over again, and never deplete the resource. We do these in a fashion that doesn’t cost a lot of money. We strive to use a lot of waste materials, recycled materials.”
Your Deed to the World
“The amazing thing about what we’re doing here is that it’s truly community owned. Volunteerism is what has made the park what it is. Because of that, the community owns this park. Volunteers have done everything in this park from spreading mulch, resurface roads, build recycling bins, bridges, repainting of buildings, donated money for signage, built the trails that are here. Now when they see somebody out throwing some trash, sitting on the rocks, breaking a bottle, who’s the first person to say something? That person who’s been out there cleaning it up.”
“The community polices it. We have park watch, a coalition of bikers and other concerned citizens who get together and go out in pairs, and are the ambassadors to the park, report anything that may seem weird, talk to folks who may be out of town, people who may have gotten lost and maybe need some water. It’s truly community owned.”
Urban Haven
“I feel that urban youth is a group that has not traditionally used the park. The reason they should come down to the park is to get away from the everyday humdrum of our mechanized lives, of living in an urban environment and always being around signs, information, noise and pollution. The park offers you an alternative to that; the ability to get away from the confusion that may be taking place elsewhere in the city. You get to come to a little haven inside the city. So I would say, Come on down and enjoy the park. We have lots to offer.”
Everything Right Here
“What I would like people to know is the true value of what they have here. People that come down to the park, understand it and see it. We have Class 5 rapids here in the middle of the city. We have rock climbing here in the middle of the city. We have world-class mountain biking trails. We have everything that is necessary to be an outdoor adventure mecca. We have it at our fingertips. We have a nesting pair of bald eagles. You’d have to go to Juneau, Alaska to see that. We are an outdoor adventure recreation mecca – Richmond, Virginia.”
