Some people dream about visiting the sandy beaches of Hawaii. But New Jersey native Ruth D’Amico always dreamed of exploring the mountains and oceans of Alaska.
The U.S. Forest Service fisheries biologist was always curious about nature and hoped to one day feed this love for wonder in Alaska. Hailing from a small town, D’Amico lived nowhere near a national forest and yearned to be around Alaska’s mountains that she read about as a child. Little did she know that she would one day call those Alaskan mountains home.