AMC Outdoors, April 2002

By Katharine Wroth

On her first backpack, a trip in the Smokies a little over a decade ago, Andrea Deaton was eager to see what the wilderness held. And she got an eyeful—literally. "I got stung by a bee about a millimeter from my eyeball," remembers Deaton, then a student at Mars Hill College in Asheville, N.C. Despite that harsh introduction, Deaton kept hitting the trail. Today she guides others as the Backpacking Chair—and frequent hike and bike leader—of the Delaware Valley Chapter.

Though she instructs at chapter leadership workshops and has completed AMC's Mountain Leadership School, Major Excursions training, and SOLO Wilderness First Aid certification, Deaton says she's "not an expert, and I don't profess to be one—I throw a bear-bag rope crooked just like anyone else." Still, she doesn't take her duties lightly: "Safety always comes first."

This mix of modesty and awareness comforts novices at the chapter's popular intro to backpacking course, which Deaton created and helps run. (Her efforts helped get her the chapter's Appie of the Year award in 2001.)

"People seem reassured to find out I haven't been doing this since I was five," notes Deaton, 31. In fact, her Southern-bred parents—who moved the family around the Mid-Atlantic due to her father's work as a pastor—"came from the mindset that the outdoors was for work, not play."

Now deftly mixing work and play, Deaton is lending her professional "arm-twisting" skills—gleaned from her job in development at WXPN, a public radio station in Philadelphia—to the AMC, organizing a weekend hike- and bikeathon in May to support the Capital Campaign. She also raises funds for the city's Arden Theatre and puts a college voice degree to use in the semi-professional Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia. And yes, she sometimes sings on the trail. But when she does, she chooses "something everyone can sing along with."

—Katharine Wroth is Senior Editor of AMC Outdoors.