Mid-Year Reflection
Early in my tenure here at Reflection Riding, I reached out to a lapsed donor named Bradley Currey. With an Atlanta address, I wasn’t sure he’d have much interest in supporting our work, but I sent him a letter. A few weeks later, a response arrived, neatly typed and with a check included. “I don’t think you’d have a hard time raising money if you simply auctioned off your job,” he wrote, continuing on to describe how beautiful and peaceful Reflection Riding had always been to him and saying that he was happy to help.
As we’ve just passed the mid-year point, I find myself reflecting not only on how lucky I am to have a job here, but also how lucky we all are to have a place like this at all. It took foresight to anticipate the region's development and growth. It took investment and planning to ensure this open space would exist for the entire community, forever. Hundreds of people have been as lucky as I have been to work on this land, connecting generations of Chattanoogans with nature.
Our team has fantastic news to share, and I hope you’ll enjoy hearing about a few of the most exciting efforts so far in 2026.
Our wildlife team has been out in the community more than ever before, visiting schools, senior living facilities, and community events across the region. These live-animal encounters continue to create powerful moments of connection. Children and adults alike learn about the “superpowers” of our local opossums, snakes, birds of prey, and others. We continue to hear from teachers that students keep talking about the wildlife they’ve seen long after our team leaves the classroom.
Back on campus, our team has been training Leuci, our new leucistic Red-tailed Hawk that you helped name, as she prepares to join her colleagues in the classroom. We’re excited to share that we’ve passed four federal and state wildlife inspections this year with flying colors. We’ve continued to improve our wildlife husbandry practices and will travel with our longtime veterinarian, Dr. Chris Keller, to learn from other facilities as we plan for even better animal enclosures in the future. If you’ve visited lately, you may have already seen our upgraded signage around our snakes and reptiles. We hope to continue to improve these enclosures and have some fun expansions planned.
The Native Plant Nursery looks better than ever as our staff continues to create a welcoming place full of learning, restoration, and community connection. We’ve propagated over 90 species, hosted over 10 volunteer groups, supported apprentices from The Howard School in hands-on nursery work, and participated in regional tree giveaways. I’m most excited about our new native ecotype seed sourcing initiative. You’ll hear more about that as it develops in the coming years. At our recent Brunch & Blooms fundraiser, we broke plant sales records and raised money to continue these efforts and to care for the Philp Memorial Garden.
Educational programming continues to expand in exciting ways. We celebrated the largest field trip season in Reflection Riding’s history. Our educators have heard from students that they want to bring their families back so they can share what they’ve learned and invite their parents to experience the magic of this landscape. I love to see the ripple effects of kids inviting their siblings and parents to return to nature. I love hearing the pride in their voice as they serve as tour guides, showing off their favorite parts of the place.
Back to the apprentices: these students have supported major campus events, helped with our tree giveaway programs, restored a native pollinator garden at The Howard School, worked to rewild our campus, cared for our Nature PlayScape, and so much more! We’re excited to have kicked off a partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters to match pre-apprentices with mentors.
As summer camp continues, we’re full of youthful energy on campus. Several age groups have sold out completely as we celebrate another area of our work that has broken new attendance records. We are thrilled to have so many children with us enjoying their time in nature, even as it starts to get a little warm out here!
The backdrop to all of this: the continued improvements and evolution of our Welcome Center. Thanks to your support in last summer’s campaign, we’ve been under construction over the first half of this year. We’re adding a new after-hours, ADA-accessible bathroom. We’ve already replaced all the decking between the buildings with eco-friendly (and gorgeous) thermally modified pine. We’re repairing and painting our exteriors and refreshing the “Reflection Flyway” mural. Our stone walkway has already made our entryway so much more welcoming. New signs and simple improvements, like a newly lined parking lot, have greatly enhanced the visitor experience. I hope you’ll come visit soon and see these improvements you’ve made possible.
Bradley Currey was right: I have an enviable job, and every time I pause to reflect on our work, I’m amazed at everything that you make possible for us. As daily life seems to become more chaotic and complicated by the day, protected land remains. Reflection Riding reminds us of the unchanging fact that humans belong in nature. We’re committed to ensuring that it’s here for you, forever.
As his obituary in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said, “the list of people who are grateful that Brad Currey coached, encouraged, motivated, cajoled and inspired them to give their best may be as long as the Atlanta phone book,” and I’m one of the people on that list. I wish I had been able to get to know him better. His story came to me as I sat down to write you this mid-year update. I’ve been thinking about his legacy quite a bit lately. I didn’t know until much later that Brad was a legend in the conservation world, having worked diligently on water conservation and playing a critical role in the early days of paper recycling in America.
Because I love my job, I won’t be auctioning it off, but I hope, like Bradley, that you’ll continue to invest in our work. Thank you for everything you do for us.
With gratitude,
Mark McKnight
