How Paddling Led to a Career Protecting Public Lands

Adam Cramer is Outdoor Alliance’s Executive Director

In the early 2000’s, I was a corporate environmental lawyer working at a big firm in Washington, DC. I moved to DC for work, but what’s kept me here for more than twenty years is the kayaking.

Among the city’s best-kept secrets is that it is one of the most amazing whitewater paddling destinations on the planet. The Potomac River is a DC landmarks, but most people only know it as a broad, placid river flanked by monuments. A few miles upstream, it’s a totally different story. Geologically, it’s where the Cumberland Plateau meets the Piedmont, and that creates massive waterfalls, one after the other, all converging into a walled gorge with huge waves, swirls, and boils. In other words, it’s kayaking nirvana. Great Falls National Park just outside of DC is a favorite destination for kayakers, but also has great hiking and climbing. DC is also within a day’s drive of a ton of other world-class rivers, including the Upper Youghiogheny in Western Maryland on the West Virginia border. Along with the Potomac, the Upper Youghiogheny is one of my favorite places in the world, a river that’s incredibly important to me and to my paddling community in DC.

Back in 2001, I was on my first paddling road trip with a group of friends, one of whom worked for American Whitewater. During one of the many shuttles, the guy from American Whitewater asked me a question that usually doesn’t go anywhere good: “Hey Cramer, you’re a lawyer, right?” This time, the question was a turning point that changed the direction of my entire life. He told me that a group of paddlers was trying to negotiate with a local hydropower company to get a better release schedule for the Upper Yough and wanted to see if I could help. I really didn’t know too much about hydropower permits, but decided to give it a go. American Whitewater connected me with other locals working on the river and I worked hard to earn their trust. We spent years negotiating not only with the hydropower company, but everyone else in who had a stake in the outcome. Some of the people working to protect the Upper Yough didn’t even like each other, but they shared a connection to the river. In the end, we negotiated better flows for the ecosystem and a great release schedule for kayakers that also benefitted the local economy.

This early success trying to protect a place I love eventually led to my work at Outdoor Alliance. In the mid-2000’s, Outdoor Alliance was just a good idea, as a half-dozen Executive Directors of recreation nonprofits started meeting to figure out how to work together. Over time, my role within Outdoor Alliance grew from being their lawyer on retainer to starting to lead joint projects, and eventually, to establishing the organization as its own 501c3 with a thriving staff and set of issues we advocate on.

Nevertheless, this early success with the Upper Yough shaped the way I see our work and how we pursue our mission at Outdoor Alliance. We know that people with a personal connection to a place have a knack for collaborating, finding consensus, and for being compassionate and pragmatic. In the outdoor community, this personal connection fuels us in a fundamentally different way than other approaches to conservation. Our motivation to protect places is about a love of these special places and a passion for the wider landscapes and the experiences that they make possible.

Everyone who becomes an advocate for the outdoors has their own Upper Yough, a place that they would do anything to protect. While fear and guilt have been very effective motivators for the environmental movement, I think the future of conservation is in harnessing people’s passion for the outdoors into protecting both places and the planet.