Melia Derrick is on the run. A lot.
The 70-year-old retired postal worker has run a half-marathon in every state in the U.S. She started the 50-state challenge in 2017 and finished in Maui just before the wildfires there in 2023.
But that doesn’t mean this Brooklyn Park woman doesn’t slow down to smell the prairie flowers – or yank out a hunk of invasive burdock. Derrick is a “Restoration Supervisor,” who works with St. Paul Parks and Recreation on projects to restore and protect natural areas.
Derrick’s volunteer parks work often includes a group she brings from her church, Lyndale United Church of Christ in Minneapolis. There are “five or six solid volunteers” who join her for three or four projects in the summer and early fall.
In June of 2019, Derrick started training to become a Minnesota Master Naturalist, through the University of Minnesota Extension. It’s like the more familiar Master Gardener program, she says, but the focus is on conservation education and service.
Derrick took the “Big Woods Big Rivers” course to become a Master Naturalist. She’s required to do 40 hours of volunteer work and eight hours of training annual to remain active. “There’s so much to learn,” she says.
She did some work with the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary in St. Paul and says she saw an increased emphasis on the Indigenous people and their history in that area. Derrick has done research about that area, the Wakan Tipi Dakotah sacred land, to present to an adult education class. She’s helped with restoration work at Wakan Tipi and at Coldwater Spring near Fort Snelling.
Derrick calls her volunteer work “restorative” – “helping to restore what we screwed up.”
Though she studied Big Woods Big Rivers in her naturalist training, Derrick says she has become increasingly interested in native prairie restoration. During one volunteer work session in a native prairie area, her group even found a green milkweed plant that previously hadn’t been seen in that area.
She’s helped remove invasive weeds, spread good seeds and captured insects.
And it’s not all work. There’s an important social aspect to volunteering. “That’s the idea: Have a good time, talk to somebody and learn something.”
Adventures on the run
Derrick says she started running when she quit smoking in 1982. She remembers she “felt like Rocky” when she was able to run from her house to the stop sign a mile away. After doing a lot of runs around the Twin Cities, she and her friend Renee Hickerson did a run in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone.
They had a great time and Hickerson said, “You know, we could keep doing this.” The 50-state challenge began, with travels to many of the races in her Honda CRV (which she calls her “Compact Recreational Vehicle”).
They ran and also visited national parks and museums. They did a glacier tour in Alaska, went “snuba” diving (a combo of scuba and snorkeling) in Hawaii, and got close to hot air balloons after a run in New Mexico during the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.
“We saw so much. This really is a great country.”
A run in Massachusetts brought them to a Norman Rockwell museum that they hadn’t known about.
A favorite run was at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma. It was the only time Derrick used support poles and was “up and down all day long.” Fording a big stream was part of the fun – “just because of the challenge,” Derrick says.
“These are the kind of things on that journey where you just go, ‘Wow.’”
Although she’s lived in Minnesota since two weeks after graduating from high school in Minot, N.D., Derrick knows her way around moving around. Her dad was in the Air Force and the family lived in Arizona, Arkansas, Texas and North Dakota. Her parents were from Mississippi and the three children each graduated from a different high school.
Derrick graduated from the University of MInnesota – Morris in 1977, worked briefly for the Department of Agriculture and for a veterinarian before joining the post office, where she was a carrier in Minneapolis for more than 30 years and was active in the union.
Derrick, who has a daughter who lives in St. Louis Park, has no plans to leave Minnesota. It’s the only place she wants to live.
“I’ve visited every state,” she says, “so I can say that.”
Inspired? Volunteer in Saint Paul parks! From Wildlife Monitors to Park and Garden Stewards, there are ways to make a difference that connect you to nature. Learn more
Article and photos by Kathy Berdan.