(Sharing this announcement from Heartwood, a trusted organization doing amazing work emerging from a love for forests.)

2025 FOREST COUNCIL
MAY 23-25, 2025 • MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND
CAMP CRESTFIELD • 195 TAGGART ROAD • SLIPPERY ROCK, PA, 16057

Please join us for the 33rd Annual Heartwood Forest Council • REGISTER TODAY: https://registration.heartwood.org/

Featured Keynote Speaker Joan Maloof, Ph.D, Founder of the Old-Growth Forest Network

  • Free Camping with Registration (BYO camping gear)
  • Workshops, Trainings, and Skillshares with Fair Shake Legal Services, CELDF, Mountain Watershed Association, and More!
  • Youth and Family Programs with Arts Excursions Unlimited
  • Green Marketplace and the Sunday Night Live Auction
  • Campfire Camaraderie and Grassroots Solidarity
  • It’s important for folks to register, whether you pay now or later or plan to get a Scholarship—registering helps the cooks prep for meals among other logistical considerations.
  • No Dogs. (for real, sorry)

The Heartwood Forest Council is our yearly gathering to celebrate the grassroots green movement, bringing together activists from across the region to a place that needs the attention and support of the Heartwood network. At last year’s gathering in Ohio, we had planned to gather in the mountains of North Carolina, but the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene caused us to rethink that plan. We encourage our members to visit the website or facebook page of the Alliance for Appalachia to find links where you can contribute to local support funds to help these communities.

The Western Pennsylvania region faces significant threats from the petrochemical plastics industry, exploiting the wealth of fossil-gas methane extracted from the earth by the fracking industry to make disposable plastic items for the consumer economy. Plans for the ARCH2 Hydrogen Hub would lock our society into a new cycle of dependency on fossil gas, and schemes to inject carbon into the same rock formations fracked for the methane they hold is a dangerous false solution to the problems that climate change is presenting.

The only proven solution to the problem of elevated atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, is our forests and wetland habitats. While industrial carbon injection wells seek to lock that carbon deep in the mineral rock, forests and wetlands transform carbon dioxide into living soil, which keeps that carbon available for us carbon-based life forms to thrive upon. All we need to do, is let it grow. And in return, that forest gives us clean water, nutritious foods and herbal medicines, the uplifting sounds of birdsong, a thriving recreation economy that is resilient to the boom-and-bust cycles of our capitalist economy, spiritual serenity, and so much more.

And so we gather each year to strategize together, share skills and resources with one another, and while we’re at it have a really great time. This year we have some very exciting workshops lined up: deep dives into forest protection at both federal and state levels, trainings ranging from the rights of protestors to the rights of Nature, offered by the front-line grassroots groups based here in the region.

Heartwood is partnering with a community organization based in Pittsburgh’s Hazelwood neighborhood, Arts Excursions Unlimited, to include the arts and theater in the weekend program. Music and the arts are not only powerful tools for communicating values like love for forests and wildness and diversity in all its forms and expressions, they are an essential part of refreshing and restoring the human spirit. This partnership allows us to expand our Youth and Family programs, making our event more accessible to everyone who wants to attend. Visit our website for more details about the program and other information about the event.

We hope you will join us for this weekend of grassroots solidarity and camaraderie. We invite you to donate an item to the Sunday Night Live Auction, perhaps something that reflects the work you do defending the place you love. We encourage you to bring a song or poem for the Talent Show, bring a musical instrument for hanging out around the campfire, bring a friend, and don’t forget things like flashlight and raingear, but please leave your pets in the care of someone else for the weekend, the camp has a strict “No Dogs” policy. Please contact us at info@heartwood.org with any questions about this event.

REGISTER TODAY: https://registration.heartwood.org/

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