“The outdoors have given me so much,” says Monica Elliott, the team leader of FBT’s 2025 Forest Corps. “It’s great to be able to give back to it as part of the Forest Corps. I’m excited to help make sure the BTNF is safe and accessible for everyone.”
Born in Japan and raised in Southern California, Monica did not grow up in an “outdoorsy” family and started hiking only in college (she went to the University of California, Santa Cruz). “There was so much hiking there and once I got a taste of it, I thought, ‘I need more,’” she says.
But it wasn’t until her mid-20s that Monica was really able to get more time outdoors. She spent her early 20s working for start-ups (doing program management and recruiting). “I was working inside constantly staring at a computer, and I craved being outside,” she says. “I wanted to experience something bigger than myself.” She found the American Conservation Experience and saw it as a trial experience; she worked for the organization for three months doing a mix of trail work, habitat restoration, and invasive species removal. “I fell in love with the work and never looked back,” she says. Monica went on from this first conservation corps job to a couple of stints in Colorado, doing everything from trail maintenance to chainsaw work.
“I found myself growing into a person that I wanted to be that I didn’t know I had wanted to be,” she says. “The jobs were teaching me a lot about myself while pushing me mentally, physically, and emotionally.”
Today, only about 10 years after she started doing her first hikes and four years after her first backpacking trip, Monica regularly carries a 50-pound backpack into the woods to spend eight days at a time working on building and maintaining trails and clearing trees, while making sure to follow Leave No Trace principles and safely recreate in wilderness areas.
“I didn’t know anything about gear, how to properly pack a pack, Leave No Trace, or really, hiking in the woods, at all when I started with the Conservation Corps,” Monica says. “It was kind of like I was building a plane and learning how to fly it at the same time. It was intimidating—and I made a lot of mistakes—but my support system helped me through it all. I learned humility. I learned how to be resilient. It’s OK to crash; just get up and try again.”
Monica has vivid memories of her first backpacking trip. “It was in the Grand Canyon and it kicked my ass,” she says. “I didn’t have the right layers or the right gear. My pack was huge and heavy and it bruised me all over. I was wearing a cotton hoodie and ended up with heat rash all over. But I still loved it. The outdoors are a mirror for yourself. It allowed me to realize how beautiful my life was. I still feel that every time I go into the woods.”
Having had her own outdoor mentors, Monica enjoys helping others, especially marginalized communities, explore the outdoors. “Diversity is everything,” she says. “Look around in nature and you’ll notice how diverse any ecosystem is—it needs to be for it to be healthy. For public lands to survive, people from as many different communities and backgrounds as possible need to feel comfortable in them, and I want to help with that, whether by being willing to share my experiences and mistakes, supporting members of my team, or learning what advocacy looks like in the outdoor space.”
Favorite piece of camping gear: “My sleeping bag—there’s nothing like the warmth, safety, and comfort of zipping myself up and covering my head underneath my bag.”
Favorite piece of Forest Corps gear: “The first tool I’ll reach for in the tool cache is a sharp, Silky Bigboy (hand saw). With how much we’re cutting back logs and branches, it’s the best tool to whip on the trail for a quick cut,” Monica says.