From Persia to Pines

Text By David Beers
Photo Courtesy of Great Mountain Forest

On top of a bookshelf in Matt Gallagher’s Great Mountain Forest (GMF) office is a photo of him in military fatigues with former president George W. Bush in Kuwait. How does this framed photo reside in a forestry office in woodsy northwest Connecticut? 

This story begins with Gallagher growing up along the Connecticut shoreline, where he was a Boy Scout who loved being outdoors. After years of itinerant construction work in his early 20s, Gallagher was looking for more structure and a brighter future when he joined the Navy Seabees. A year later, he was deployed to Kuwait as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom and met former president Bush at a USO event, and hence the photo. But how did the photo make it to the top of a GMF office bookshelf?

After returning to the United States, Gallagher met his wife, Hope, who is also a Seabee. They settled into a military life at Port Hueneme, near Los Angeles, until 2011. That was an eventful year for the Gallaghers. Their son Logan was born three months prematurely, and Matt was deployed to oversee construction of forward operating bases in dangerous Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. While they did not know it then, 2011 would be a pivotal year for their future. 

Upon Gallagher’s return to California, he began to suffer from PTSD. A family trip to Yosemite National Park lifted the PTSD darkness for the first time and reconnected Gallagher to his outdoor Boy Scout roots. The couple continued their military service at Port Hueneme until 2015, when their young family of four moved to Connecticut to be closer to Matt’s family and to use the G.I. Bill to go to college. 

Back in the pivotal year of 2011, Matt’s deployment led to an epiphany at Yosemite. Logan’s premature birth required long-term care and therapy. It was this preemie medical experience that led Hope to study occupational therapy at Quinnipiac College. And it was post-deployment PTSD that led to Matt studying environmental science at the University of New Haven. 

They both worked on their education in New Haven while raising their two boys. Gallagher got work experience using drones to monitor sea-level rise in coastal wetlands, along with work experience in controlling invasive species. After he finished his degree, he started graduate studies at the Yale School of Forestry. An initial week of field forestry studies at GMF’s Yale Camp made him immediately change his major from environmental management to forestry. This introduction to GMF allowed him to find what he had been looking for all along in a career.

During his Yale studies, Gallagher worked as the assistant forest manager of the 7,800-acre Yale-Myers research forest in Connecticut’s Quiet Corner and completed two internships with Connecticut DEEP’s Division of Forestry. Both Matt and Hope finished their studies in early 2020 and promptly moved to their new home in Falls Village abutting GMF land. Hope began working as an occupational therapist at Noble Horizons, and Matt started working for a local logger, with some forestry consulting work on the side. Their active household now included three children, a large garden, some livestock and a sugar house.

In the fall of 2021, Gallagher approached GMF about leasing some of their maple trees for tapping. One thing led to another, and GMF started having Gallagher do some contract work for them. This led to him starting his full-time staff position this past June as GMF’s director of programs and operations. 

Gallagher talks excitedly about the GMF projects he is working on, all of which focus on increasing awareness and use of GMF. This work began with overseeing the summer lecture series on forest health by a suite of scientists from the state’s Agricultural Experiment Station. Gallagher is currently working on the winter lecture series lineup and bringing back the once popular Open Forest Day in the fall and the maple-themed day in the spring. He is venturing out to do educational events at schools and then bringing the students back to the forest. He also plans to bring more learning to the summer internships and start up a non-summer internship program for a local college student. Finally, Gallagher is collaborating with similar organizations (White Memorial Conservation Center, McLean Game Refuge, Sharon Audubon Center) to encourage cross-pollination of ideas and resources; he hopes to start having regular meetings with these other nonprofit educational forests.

When looked at in total, some might find all these projects rather overwhelming, but not Gallagher. His focus and composure permeate his presence. When asked for a quote, Gallagher said, “It is hard to be great at something if you try to be good at everything.”