What Nathan Built

Some of the best things we get to be part of start with a single email. This one started with Nathan.

Nathan, a member of a Rochester-area BSA Troop, reached out to us at Rochester Accessible Adventures to set up a service project. From that first conversation — and in partnership with the Genesee Land Trust — it grew into something lasting: a bench on the trail at Ganargua Creek Meadow Preserve, one of several placed along the route so that people with disabilities — and everybody, really — have places to stop, rest, and take in where they are.

Nathan works on the bench in his garage, cutting the boards to put together. 

A bench may sound simple. It isn’t. A place to rest is often the difference between a trail someone can use and one they can’t — and Nathan understood that from the start. In his own words:

“I reached out to RAA to do a service project because I think what they’re doing is important to our community… Being able to do sports with friends is something that I really enjoy, and I think that no matter someone’s abilities, everyone should be able to do that.”

He didn’t stop at the woodwork, either. Nathan also completed a three-hour online inclusion awareness course — and told his troop it changed how he sees our community and our recreation spaces. I love that!

Here is why this matters to me.

Since 2023, Rochester Accessible Adventures and the Genesee Land Trust have worked side by side to bring a lens of inclusion to the Land Trust’s nature preserves, its community events, and the organization itself. In that time, Genesee Land Trust has made real, tangible progress across its 19 preserves — from an accessible observation deck to improved rich descriptions of trails so people can understand what is beyond the parking lot before they arrive. Improving accessibility is not a box you check once. It’s an ongoing journey that asks you to operate through a lens of inclusion all of the time. The Genesee Land Trust is doing that work, and Nathan’s bench is now part of it.

Nathan and the completed bench project, ready for transporting to the nature preserve. 

When people ask me what “systems change” actually looks like, this is the answer. It isn’t one organization, one bench, or one policy. It’s a whole community deciding that access is simply how we do things. And when a young person chooses accessibility as his project topic and then invests his time and energy into planning and problem-solving, and comes out the other side seeing his community differently, it tells me the culture is shifting in exactly the direction we’ve been working toward.

Nathan didn’t only build something people can use. He built an expectation: that the outdoors belongs to everyone, and that making it so is worth doing, and worth doing well.

That’s the future we’re building. It’s good to know it’s in such capable hands.

Nathan and Genesee Land Trust’s Kevin Farrell, Senior Director of Conservation, try out the new bench at its new home in the Ganargua Creek Meadow Preserve.

So my thanks go to Nathan — for his vision, his craftsmanship, and his open mind; to the leaders and families of Nathan’s Troop, who stood behind him; and to our friends at Genesee Land Trust, who keep proving that inclusion is an everyday practice.

And to every young person wondering whether their project can really matter: look at what Nathan did. Access gets built by hands like his — one bench, one path, one genuine welcome at a time. We’ll be right here, building alongside you.

Want to learn more about how Rochester Accessible Adventures partners with organizations to open the outdoors to everyone? Reach out to us at RAA@RochesterAccessibleAdventures.orgcreate new email.

A red-shouldered hawk that Nathan spotted while walking on the trail after the bench installation.