What are the chances of a story in our first issue having a completely unplanned family tie to one in this 30th Anniversary issue? Maybe pretty good once you consider that family’s commitment to the region we love.
Photo Above: A family in 1988. From left: Galen, Luke, Anita, and Aaron Staengl (from this magazine’s inaugural issue).
Writer Angela Minor’s story pitch went like this: “How about a piece on a super active, passionate, official club of young birders in the Blue Ridge?” Seemed interesting enough to me, but given my worry that there might be a dozen such clubs in the region, as well as our recent push for more profiles in the magazine, I looked around on the club’s website and found that they had at least one star among them—a well-awarded young birder.
And so it came to pass that Angela went to work on a profile of one Ezra Staengl, 14-year-old ace birder. See page 56.
Jump to a little later in preparations for this issue, when I got to carry out the task of pulling out Volume I, No. 1 (June/July 1988) to look for a salient quote from the issue for the Country Roads department’s first-ever “30 Years Ago in Blue Ridge Country” short (as you may have noted, we’ve been doing “25 Years Ago . . .” for many issues).
And there I became re-aquainted with what was my favorite piece in that inaugural issue: “Clean Air, Clean Fuel and Homegrown Plastic: Luke Staengl has Carved an Unusual Niche in Rural Floyd County, Virginia.”
The piece was an appreciative portrait of a family—Luke and Anita Staengl and their sons Galen and Aaron—and focused primarily on Luke Staengl’s work to create plastic without petroleum (using wood), as well as to create alcohol from wood, making Staengl the largest industrial employer in the county. An undertaking he took on with this perspective: “Living in the country grounds me. I feel connected to the earth and its people.”
The piece, by the way, was written by Su Clauson—now Su Clauson-Wicker—a long-time contributing editor who has been a part of the magazine ever since.
I think I’ve killed the suspense: Yes, Luke Staengl, serendipity presents, is Ezra Staengl’s granddad, and Galen is his father.
What I hope I haven’t dampened is the Staengl family’s embodiment of what makes this region special and valuable—their deep and abiding commitment to the land and its wonders, to things natural and things beautiful.
It is that kind of commitment that has allowed this magazine to live and flourish for these 30 years, that has provided the material to have created these 180 issues so far.
We are immensely grateful to all those who, like the Staengls, have graced our pages with their love of the mountains and their natural wonders.
And to the writers and photographers who continue to bring us their wonderful stories.
