Back to Nature

If you're going hiking in the cold weather, Mike Maloney can give you a tip-or 20.

An experienced hiker and camper, Mike believes in planning ahead. A pre-trip checklist for a recent snowshoeing trip to New Hampshire's White Mountains, for example, was five pages long.

"When I was up there, it was 12 degrees below zero. Those are desperate conditions," says the newly elected president of Madison's Land Conservation Trust. "But we had a great time."

If you're a first-time camper, Mike suggests starting simple, such as camping out in the backyard: "Each time you go, you learn a bit more. By the time you're ready to camp in 12 below zero, your checklist will be five-pages long, too!"

When Mike's not exploring the outdoors in frigid temperatures, he's hard at work as an active member of the Land Conservation Trust, of which he's been a board member for nine years. He was elected president last November and began his term as president on Jan. 1.

A fan of the outdoors since childhood, Mike says he feels privileged to work with the trust.

"I've had a lifelong love of the outdoors," Mike says. "Madison has such beautiful natural resources that it's a real honor to be in a position to help protect them."

As a little boy growing up in Nanuet, New York, Mike was a member of the National Campers & Hikers Association and a Boy Scout, through which his love for the outdoors began to grow.

Later, not only did Mike meet future wife Macdara MacColl at a New York City hiking club meeting, but he also took her canoeing for their third date.

"As dates go, that's going to be a make it or break it. We did a lot of camping and hiking. We still do," he says.

The couple even spent their honeymoon hiking in Patagonia-a trip Mike describes as one of the most dramatic he's ever experienced.

"We were turned back at Pass of the Clouds and were stuck on the Argentine-Chilean border. We were down to our last Power Bar when we got out!"

Even the couple's three children share their parents' love for the outdoors. The entire family regularly hikes, boats, and takes camping trips together.

One pastime Mike doesn't share with his family is triathlons. He's finished a dozen triathlons with a group of friends, and regularly competes in Dave Parcell's Madison Triathlon.

Mike and Macdara, who grew up in Wilton, moved to Madison in 2000 after a friend suggested they visit.

"Someone said, 'If you want a place to live, check out Madison,' and we did and we really fell in love with it," Mike says. "We were at the playground and someone said, 'You must be here for the beach' and we said, 'There's a beach, too!'"

Moving to Madison from Hoboken, New Jersey, was an easy choice: "We both moved things around so we could hit that home run of getting to live in a great place like Madison," Mike says.

After settling here, the nature lover says he "didn't waste any time getting out on the trust lands" and was shortly invited to join the board.

"I love to hike the local trails and swim in the Long Island Sound, and I bike along the back roads and run," Mike says, adding that his favorite local trail is Madison's Indian Rock Shelters Trail, "a beautiful trail that goes past two caves, where it's likely Indians would have spent some of the summer months."

As president, Mike has high hopes for the land trust, including positioning the trust to mark its 50th anniversary in 2014.

"We have a really talented group of board members and our whole group is hoping to position ourselves for the next 50 years," Mike says, adding that the trust's responsibilities include stewardship of the land it currently has, acquiring new properties, and outreach.

Mike is particularly excited about the Bauermeister project, an 80-acre parcel of land formerly owned by Madison's Jane Bauermeister and acquired by the town last year.

"The parcel is beautiful and it's ready to have trails put on it, so that's going to be our next really exciting project," Mike says.

The owner of Maloney & Company, LLC, an insurance brokerage in Guilford that was formerly located in Madison, Mike graduated from Colgate University with a bachelor's in English and went on to earn his MBA in finance and international business from New York University's Stern School of Business. After graduation, he took 10 months off to backpack around the world, visiting South America, Asia, and Europe. He names Egypt's Nile and Nepal's Annapurna as among his most memorable destinations, but keeps maps in his office to commemorate several favorite trips-to Patagonia, Nepal, and the Sinai Desert.

Mike continues to travel with his family, this spring planning a trip to Costa Rica and a summer journey to Scotland "to visit friends I made on the backpacking trip."

Mike also volunteers with his sons' soccer teams (they currently play for Juventus). He and Macdara videotape the monthly Board of Selectmen meetings for local channel 20.