Mara has been in Fayette County for 35 years. When she moved there, Fayetteville was boarded up. She watched it become a world-class outdoor destination — the New River Gorge, the whitewater, the rock climbing, the trails — and she watched the community navigate what that kind of success actually costs. Housing pressure. Crowding. Visitor management challenges nobody planned for. There’s a phrase she uses: pains of success. Fayette County is living through them now, and Mara thinks the rest of West Virginia can get ahead of those problems by paying attention.
Melanie runs Active Southern WV, a nonprofit putting volunteer-led outdoor programming into 22 counties — beginner-friendly, multigenerational, no adrenaline required. She’s also part of the Sweets of the East, a women’s raft racing team that competed most recently in Argentina, representing West Virginia in an international field where mentioning the Gauley River alone earns immediate respect. Between the two of them, they’ve been waiting a long time for a room full of people across the state to say collaboration out loud and actually mean it. At the WV Outdoor Economy Summit, they finally got there. Mara used the word giddy. That feels about right.
Learn more about: Active Southern WV / WV Raft Race / Sweets of the East
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