Even from a distance, I recognize Andy Falender immediately. It's the first day of fall, sunny and warm, and he is dressed for work—AMC T-shirt, hiking pants, sturdy boots. He's tall, of course, his white hair creating a snow-capped effect, but it's that Keep on Truckin' gait, feet kicking out just those few extra inches with every step, that seems to define him.

I catch Andy at the entrance of AMC's Highland Center, where we've arranged to meet for a hike up the Mount Willard Trail to talk about his 23 years as executive director and president of AMC. But Andy doesn't want to talk about himself, and even as we're closing in on Centennial Pool, we still haven't touched on the subject of his remarkable tenure. I do know that his daughter Becca is applying to vet schools and his son Jason has just accepted his first job out of college as an engineer, that his wife, Jackie, is "really the hiker," and that Andy doesn't have the knack for remembering the names of small plants along the trail. "Oh, you'd have to talk to Walter for that," he says, referring to AMC Senior Vice President Walter Graff.

VISION 2010
To read more about the last 10 years of AMC's accomplishments under Andy Falender's leadership, see outdoors.org/vision2010 See a timeline of accomplishments here.

Andy does this a lot, this recognizing and acknowledging others for their unique abilities and contributions. He says, "The most important thing I can do with my talented staff is to make sure I keep out of their way."

And that's true enough. Sam Pryor, who served as president of AMC's board of directors from 1994 to 1996, has worked with Andy from the get-go. "Andy's quick to give people credit, and surrounds himself with talent," Pryor says, "and if he thinks you're headed in the right direction, he doesn't put himself in the middle." But Andy's cultivation of hard work and smarts is only part of the story. When we reach Centennial Pool, Andy, who is 66, stops to admire the falls. "When I'm up here, my routine is to run from the lodge to the pool," he says. "Yesterday, I ran 100 yards beyond."

This—Andy's exceptional drive to go the extra distance, whether hiking or working—comes closer to telling the whole story. When I ask, What next? Andy is vague on details—a few boards, maybe a bigger project—instead recalling a conversation with AMC's Board Chair Laurie Gabriel. "Don't plan it out, don't do this like you've done everything else," she advised. "Take two months and do nothing."

He laughs. "That'd kill me!"

When Andy came on board in 1988, a Harvard MBA and Peace Corps alum jazzed from a successful 14-year turnaround of the New England Conservatory of Music, he had his doubters. "Who was this guy from Indiana, from a music school?" Pryor, an admirer who later collaborated with Andy on protecting Sterling Forest, remembers thinking when he was sitting on the hiring committee. "What the hell does he know about hiking, about AMC?"

Well, he knew AMC, 112 years after its founding, had huge potential but was in debt, and that its volunteers and staff were struggling to find common purpose. More important, he understood that what would eventually become the core of AMC's mission—the belief that successful conservation depends on our connection to the natural world—fed his soul.

We're catching the first glimpses of blue sky over Crawford Notch when Andy, reflecting on the roots of his deep commitment to conservation, says, "My parents took us to state parks when we were young, but we didn't get much experience hiking mountains in Indiana!" He walks awhile, and then continues. "After my mother passed away, my dad would come out every year and we'd go hiking then. I hiked this trail with him on his 93rd birthday, just before he died." It is a beautiful trail, we agree, sweet-scented with spruce and bright with poplar and beech just starting to glow. "Yes, it's a seven-day-a-week job," he would tell me later, "but it is truly a life. Within those seven days, Jackie and I raised two kids, I received huge achievement satisfaction, and constant interaction with the broadest range of people—the leadership team, the rest of the staff, the board, board of advisors, colleagues, the huge number of volunteers, donors, other members, and guests. Who would want to work anywhere else?"

Andy was hired by unanimous vote in the end, but he knew the path ahead would be anything but unified. "He inherited longstanding fights over volunteers versus staff," recalls Andy Nichols, an attorney who served as AMC board president from 1977 to 1978 and head of an AMC capital campaign in the 1980s. Andy's first step, says Nichols, was "to bridge the gap," expanding the goals of the board, which "smoothed things over" within the membership. "Andy's able to get people to do things they didn't think they were able to do," Nichols says, including offering significant financial support. "By creating faith and stability, Andy has brought the AMC to its highest level yet."

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