WCU Stories      April 14, 2025

By Cam Adams

As a park guide at Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland, Kinley Cook’s passion for the outdoors radiates to her visitors. She gets them excited about where they’re at, whether it be by way of the park’s history or showing them a salamander that’s sitting under a random rock along its trail.

But at her office desk is something that the Western Carolina University alumna holds dear: a photo of her five-year-old self as a junior ranger.

“It reminds me that what I do is important, it's impactful and that it does change lives,” Cook said. “Ranger Hartman Maunz took time with me. I get to take time with these kids and do the same thing.”

Cook wouldn’t trade her job for the world, but prior to her time at WCU, the Raleigh native wasn’t quite sure what career path she wanted to take. So after still being left with that question after community college, Cook found a job at a summer camp — and something clicked.

“I was like ‘Oh my gosh. This is awesome. This is great. I wish I could do this forever,’” Cook said. “It didn’t quite click that there are careers you can have in recreation where you’re doing that 24/7 all the time, that is your career.”

That’s when Cook looked into public lands and landed a job at Goose Creek State Park in eastern North Carolina. Soon after, Cook enrolled at WCU as a parks and recreation management major and interned at Gorges State Park in Sapphire.

“I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I want to do. This is what’s for me,’” Cook said. “My job (at Goose Creek) was very maintenance based. I got to do some programming, but I just loved it. I loved the fact that I got to work outside. I loved the maintenance work. I loved all of it.”

While Cook knew Cullowhee is where she wanted to be given her love for the mountains and deep connections with the area, she was a bit nervous. It had been five years since she graduated high school when she started at WCU, so she was a little older than her peers.

Then at the last minute, Cook, a “very outdoorsy” and “very tomboy” gal, took a chance on Greek life.

She loved it and the people that came with it, too. She became passionate about where she was, whether it be her sorority, Alpha Chi Omega, or WCU itself — and that’s helped Cook in her current position. 

“The core of my job is to get people to care, and I feel like through being involved in so many things at Western, I found so many things that I cared about,” Cook said, “so it was easy to share those things with others.”

And that’s become her favorite part about her job.

“That brings me so much joy,” Cook said. “A kid the other day actually called me the librarian of the forest, and, you know, I think that that's probably the most accurate description I've ever heard." 

“Librarians get you excited about books. I'm going to get you excited about being outside, about the history of where you are, and I love seeing that light bulb go off in people's heads.”

Cook has been roaming around Catoctin Mountain Park for nearly a year, and each day at the office can get hectic.

She opens the visitor center, gets volunteers oriented, manages the park’s social media and on the busiest of weekends, talks to over 1,000 visitors. That’s just a fraction of it, but despite it all, it’s yet another space in Appalachia she’s grown to love mightily.

Now, she’s taking steps to expand her knowledge of this adored region, as she’ll be studying for a master’s in Appalachian studies at Shepherd University in West Virginia beginning in the fall.

“My roots are very deep. This is my home. This is what I care about, so why would I not want to learn how to love my home better, love my community better,” Cook said.

“Whenever I was at Western, everyone was like, ‘You don’t want to move to Yellowstone?’ I’m like, ‘I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do less than move to Yellowstone.’ I love this place. This is what I care about.”