Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
When Colorado native Emma Crow-Willard first learned about the Ascend West Virginia program, she had never considered moving to the Mountain State, but after some research and a trip to the state for a visit, she knew she could consider herself a transplant Mountaineer.
Ascend West Virginia was established to encourage remote workers to move to West Virginia to help build its economy, to build their lives in the state.
Crow-Willard has made her living as a hydrogeologist, data analyst and storyteller in different positions around the country. After moving to West Virginia, Crow-Willard tried to come up with a project she could do that would utilize her various skills to help her adopted state.
“I thought I should give back,” she said. “How could I use my skillset to help the West Virginia economy? I do work in data and science and storytelling, so I could try to use the Allegheny Trail as a project to collect data around economics and changing economies and tell stories. It would be a great way to get to know people and get to know the state and the landscapes and businesses, and general mindsets of how people are feeling about the economy and things like that.”
With that in mind, Crow-Willard set out to hike the Allegheny Trail in three weeks. She started at Bruceton Mills and worked her way south through the state and she will finish up at the end of the trail near Pearisburg, Virginia.
Along the way, Crow-Willard stopped in towns and met local businessowners and community members whom she interviewed and gathered data from for her research.
“I didn’t want to stretch [the hike] out for more than a month, but I also didn’t want to go fast through places because I wanted to experience them,” she said. “I wanted to be able to sit and talk to people, so it’s kind of an in between spot where – a day like today, I scheduled fewer miles so I could spend some time in Marlinton and talk to people and do some interviews and explore the town.”
Crow-Willard didn’t schedule any rest days, but she did end up with a couple of down days due to weather and her hiking skills. While she averaged seven miles a day, there was one day she chose to hike 20 miles and ended up in Durbin a day early.
“I ended up doing a rest day in Durbin, which I’m glad I did because it was pouring rain on me,” she said. “I got there soaking wet and miserable. Then there was that crazy storm that flooded Weston, so I took that day off. I happened to be in Rowlesburg, so I got a whole tour of Rowlesburg. That was really cool.”
After visiting some of the towns, Crow-Willard admitted she wished she had scheduled more rest days to spend more time at each stop. She plans to return to those towns to explore more and revisit some of the people she met.
“A lot of them I know I’ll be back to,” she said. “I’ll definitely come back to visit Marlinton. It has a lot going on.”
Crow-Willard is doing the hiking and data gathering project as a partnership with Generation West Virginia, with whom she will share her data once it is compiled. Generation West Virginia has built a website called the Allegheny Trail Data Explorer.
The website has a break down for each town that the trail runs through and includes demographics and economic information about the kinds of businesses in those towns and how many visitors the towns receive.
Once Crow-Willard recovers from her hike – with a vacation to the beach – she will compile all her data and share it with GWV, as well as publishing it for others to review. She also plans to make a series of videos of each town she visited which she will share on YouTube.
“The last two months [Generation West Virginia] has worked with this cohort to do data analysis with publicly available information and put together an amazing beta version of a dashboard where you can look through all the different towns near the trail and see what kind of businesses they have, where the opportunities lie and where some funding could help specific infrastructure problems,” Crow-Willard said.
“I’m going to bring that in and also a lot of the ground tripping data I’m gathering through my interviews and build this economic report – sort of changing economies, economic mindsets, challenges with building businesses, potential policy opportunities for supporting business growth in these communities and then putting together short, little videos on each town and then one larger video on the whole exhibition,” she continued.
When she completes the study, Crow-Willard will get back to her busy life of data, storytelling and documentary work. She started her own company which she hopes will be a non-profit for data and storytelling similar to the Allegheny Trail project.
“Previously, I was a producer at a company called Climate Now and that was essentially a climate storytelling, media company and we created videos and podcast,” she said. “We did some written articles, and we ended up doing a lot of stuff with the U.S. Department of Energy around communications and campaigns, things like that. Now I feel like I could build something similar, but more broad systems oriented.”
Crow-Willard also has a TV show proposal for a reality series built around water systems. She drew from her time as a hydrogeologist in California, where she worked with companies concerning where their water was coming from and helping drilling wells.
She has also worked on a feature documentary that will be completed by the end of this year. It follows two Columbian girls who want to be astronauts. They are accepted into a program called “She is an Astronaut” that sends them to NASA headquarters in Houston, Texas, where they meet Latina astronomers and return home with a better understanding of realizing their dreams.
For now, though, Crow-Willard continues her trek down the Allegheny Trail, a journey she predicts will be completed August 11, with a total of 25 days from beginning to end.
