Friends of the Mad River welcomes Rohan Press as the organization’s new AmeriCorps service member for the 2026 year. Press, who just moved to Fayston, will serve from January through December as the watershed engagement coordinator for Friends of the Mad River. This position will entail organizing and facilitating community events, like the Ecology Book Club and Experts Series, and taking charge of the Mad River Watch citizen science program in the warmer months.
Press comes to Vermont from the Pacific Northwest, where he has lived and worked most of his life: raised in Portland, OR, migrating to Walla Walla, WA, for college (studying English and Philosophy), and thence to Metaline Falls, WA, in Washington’s extreme northeastern corner, where he worked two seasons with the U.S. Forest Service in the Pend Oreille Valley (another watershed that uniquely flows northward). Graduate school ultimately compelled him to leave the West, and over the course of his two-year Master’s program at Harvard Divinity School, he fell in love with New England and its balance of rural living with access to the arts. He said he became especially caught up in the romance of Vermont: its independent spirit, its commitment to literature and art, its hardiness, its softness – from Ethan Allen to Ruth Stone. He hopes that this year can be an experiment in seeking home, community, and purpose in the Greens.
Press is also a music journalist, and writes regularly for a few indie music sites like The Ugly Hug and Post-Trash. His obsession with the current indie rock scene in Vermont (Lily Seabird, Robber Robber, Greg Freeman, etc.) was an unreasonably large part of his desire to move here, he explained. He hopes to braid together his love for the arts with his dedication to this country’s natural resources in all the work that he does with Friends of the Mad River.
