Giorgio Zampaglione loved his two-hour commute from the town of Mount Shasta into the surrounding northern California forests last summer. The way the light filtered through the trees on the morning drive was unbeatable, he said. He ate lunch with his crew, members of the new Forest Corps program, deep in the woods, usually far from cell service. They thinned thickets of trees and cleared brush, helping prevent the spread of fires by removing manzanita — a very flammable, shoulder-high shrub — near campsites and roads.
“The Forest Service people have been super, super happy to have us,” Zampaglione said. “They’re always saying, ‘Without you guys, this would have taken months.’”
Zampaglione, now 27 years old, had previously worked analyzing environmental data and mapping, but he was looking to do something more hands-on. Then he saw an ad on YouTube for the Forest Corps and applied through the AmeriCorps site. He didn’t realize until his first week on the job last summer that he was part of the first class of the American C... Read more
