Tell Us More: Tal Galton '96

When he wasn't studying history at Haverford, Tal Galton '96 spent every chance he could outdoors. On summer break one year, he worked as a naturalist in a state park in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Another summer, he supervised teenage trail crews in Yosemite National Park in California.

After graduation, Galton ran a youth program at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, North Carolina and eventually relocated to the mountains of western North Carolin to work at Arthur Morgan School, a Quaker institution where he led outdoor trips, ran an organic farm, and taught basic biology to kids in grades seven through nine.

These days, Galton helps others learn about and connect to nature through his company, Snakeroot Ecotours, which offers guided hikes to see local wildflowers, hidden waterfalls, bioluminescent fungi, mountaintop cloud forests, and more. A write-up in The New York Times last June raved about one of Galton's magical nighttime excursions in Pisgah National Forest to view displays of synchronous and blue ghost fireflies (Phausis reticulata).

Galton founded the company in 2016, and lives on a 1,100-acre communal settlement in the Black Mountains of North Carolina with his wife, fellow Haverford grad Jessica Ruegg '96, a psychotherapist. He spoke to Haverford magazine about the tours, his efforts to cure "plant blindness," and more.

What moved you to launch Snakeroot Ecotours?
I was originally inspired by a trip to Costa Rica in 2010, where I saw how important ecotourism is to the economy there. They have amazing forest resources that they've exploited in a way that is not extractive. Instead of logging, they've set aside vast tracts of land and built an entire economy around showing the world their amazing forests and all the critters and plants that live there. I was living here in southern Appalachia, which is also one of the great forests of the world, and I thought, "We could do that here." We have incredible biodiversity. It's a temperate forest, so it doesn't have quite the richness that tropical forests have, but it's still awfully special in its own right. And we have similarly charismatic plants and animals.

What are some notable ones?
A lot of people are surprised to learn that there are quite a few orchids growing here in our forests. I've documented about 25 or so species that live right in our valley. Some are kind of hard to spot, but some of them are very showy. These temperate orchids are just an indicator of how botanically diverse our forests are. In early springtime, before the trees leaf out, these rich forests erupt in ephemeral wildflowers. So I arrange trips to see those. And if we have a rainy spell in August or into September, we'll have the same thing, but with mushrooms. This incredible diversity of mushrooms pops up from the forest floor seemingly overnight. You can go out for an hour and see a hundred different varieties of mushrooms of all different shapes and colors and formations.

With animals, we have the standard East Coast wildlife, but we also have many, many species of salamander. In fact, our company logo has a red eft on it, which is an adolescent Eastern red-spotted newt. This is a type of newt you are likely to see on a summer stroll through the forest, especially if it's been raining. Then there are hellbenders, which live in the cold rivers in the mountains. They're one of the largest salamanders in North America and can grow up to about 2 feet. They look like little monsters.

You organize entire trips to view local fireflies. What is special about them?
This happens to be an epicenter of biodiversity for East Coast fireflies. The most famous are synchronous fireflies, which are a rare species that synchronize their flashing patterns, and there's also a species called the blue ghost firefly. They are very different from any other species because they don't actually flash or blink, they stay lit. They hover about a foot or two off the ground, and when there are large populations it's like you're standing in a sea of bioluminescence.

Blue ghosts have a relatively short display period of about three weeks or so during the second half of May, and they live in the forest. The only way to experience them is by going into the forest with no light whatsoever. If you have a flashlight, or if you're driving with headlights on your car, you would never see anything.

I had been observing them for a long time, but it wasn't until much later, when I was starting my business, that I did more research and learned what they actually are. The first scientific papers about them were only published about 15 years ago.

You've written about the need for people to overcome "plant blindness." What is it and why do we need to overcome it?
The basic idea is that humans have created this built environment for ourselves that, for the most part, we're very comfortable in. But in doing so, we've neglected old ways of relating to the ecosystems around us. Back in the old days, people were very attuned to all the different species of plants. Plants were either food or medicine, or some of them might have been hazardous--and everybody would know all the different types. But we've totally lost that. We go around completely blind to the plant diversity around us. We go into the forest and it's just a green wall.  I like opening people's eyes to botanical diversity because once folks are able to recognize and name different species, it makes their experience in the world so much richer.

Is there anything else you hope people who go on a  Snakeroot Ecotour might come away with?
I do think that the more-than-human world has an inherent value beyond what we place on it in economic terms. One thing I hope with my work is that the more people can see and appreciate these forests, the more they're going to be likely to want to protect them. There's a quote from marine biologist and nature writer Rachel Carson along those lines: "The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction."

—Eils Lotozo