You could say that Andrew Kingdon’s volunteer story is one of those “right place, right time” stories – as long as you know that the “right place” for Andrew is a bog, knee-deep in mud.

“I love coming home at the end of the day with my boots filled with water, covered in mosquito bites,” he laughs.  It’s a passion that makes him the perfect Property Guardian for some of our most difficult to access conservation lands – in fact, he’s one of our “Wilderness Property Guardians,” a newly created category for Property Guardians who use their specialized outdoor skills (in Andrew’s case, his skillset as a survey technician) to help the Nature Trust monitor the wildest of our wild places.

Andrew grew up on the LaHave River, surrounded by woodlands. “I grew up running feral through the woods, to be honest,” says Andrew. “My parents were the kind who just let you go outside until it’s dark.” Although work brought him to Halifax as an adult, he missed being out in the country; after a decade of city life, he moved back to New Germany to be closer to his parents.

“I just kind of fell into the survey thing by happenstance,” Andrew explains. His brother teaches surveying in the Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering program at the University of New Brunswick (one of only two certified Geomatics programs in Canada), so he was familiar with the subject and community. But Andrew did not enroll in that program; instead, he simply jumped into survey work with on-the-job training. His previous work – arborist, his own property maintenance business, managing a horse farm – had already given him a lot of experience with the nitty gritty of the work, including finding property boundaries and maneuvering through different terrains. He was initially hired as a survey assistant to help run the lines and manage the equipment and was quickly promoted to be a survey technician.

He was thrilled that surveying also got him back out into the woods. “There’s lots of construction work and town work of course, but I volunteered to my supervisor to please send me out to the deepest, nastiest part of the woods they can find!” he laughs.

One of those more challenging places he was sent to survey was a property at Deep Brook Bog being considered for protection by the Nature Trust. The client name caught his attention, and he looked into who the Nature Trust was. “It hadn’t occurred to me that there would be an organization solely dedicated to acquiring land and keeping it as it is,” says Andrew. He also happened to be looking for volunteer opportunities, and the “right place, right time” came together – mud, thick alder bushes, beaver dams, and all.

He’s now the Property Guardian for that same Deep Brook Bog property. “It’s all the stuff I love,” he emphasizes. “When we were doing the survey work, there was a day with torrential rain and I remember the water was up to our waist in the woodlands, not even in the boggy part! That was pretty amazing to see, how the water can channel itself in different places.”

Getting out – way out – into nature is a way for Andrew to reconnect with the wild land he grew up in. And now that he has three children and a spouse, it’s also the place that gives him time, when he can manage it, to find solitude. “People have different ways to zone out and recharge, and mine is to be out in woodlands, bogs, on top of a mountain – whatever it is, I’ll take it,” he says.

Being a Property Guardian is also a way for him to give back to nature: “For a lot of my work, we have to take down a lot of trees or help people develop land, so it’s a good way for me to give back to nature a little bit – to watch over some of these lands and make sure they’re just left alone as much as they should be. It’s really fulfilling for me that way.”

Andrew knows that the kind of outdoor work he loves isn’t for everyone. “If you’re putting in the time and effort to go that far out or that deep in, you should make sure it’s what you want – I think I’m insane for loving what I do, but here I am,” he laughs. “Know yourself. If you’re confident that this is what you want to do, then you will probably enjoy it.”

Please join us in thanking Andrew for his dedication as a volunteer! You can also learn more about Wilderness Property Guardians on this page.