Zach Korthals — Longview, Texas
About the Project
This storytelling project, led by Jazmin Storrs through her internship with Mobilize Green, offers a human perspective to the environmental challenges shaping life across Texas. From the Panhandle to South Texas, from coastal towns to Hill Country communities, interviews capture how people experience heat, drought, hurricanes, floods, and strong winds in their own backyards. Too often, these realities are contained in statistics, while the lived stories remain unheard. By centering personal voices, the project reminds us that whether facing storms, droughts, or flooding, we are bound by a common thread: our humanity. Each story calls us to listen with empathy, see beyond the data, and recognize that caring for the environment is inseparable from caring for one another.
The Healing Power of Trees
by Jazmin Storrs
About Zach Korthals
Zach Korthals is the Executive Director of Keep Longview Beautiful, a role he began in January 2024. Originally from Austin, Zach moved to Longview in 2009 and has since planted roots with his wife and three children. His background in social work and ministry continues to inform his deep sense of care for people and the environment. After a straight-line wind event in 2017 devastated the trees in his neighborhood, Zach’s connection to green space became more personal than ever. He now leads regional efforts to reforest and restore community resilience through the power of nature.
The Roots of Healing
Zach spoke about the therapeutic power of nature, sharing how it intersects with his family’s own experiences. His wife is a licensed therapist in Texas, specializing in trauma and interpersonal neurobiology, and she often draws from nature-based insights in her work.
“My wife’s areas of expertise are trauma, especially complex developmental trauma and attachment. She’s trained in therapies like EMDR, which stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. It kind of looks like hypnosis. The woman who pioneered that therapy was in the middle of her dissertation at the time. She was moving, and I believe she was pregnant… She had all these major life stressors happening at once.”
One day, the researcher went on a walk to relieve stress and discovered something profound.
“By the time she got to the end of her walk, she felt this visceral sense of relief, and she was like, why did that happen? Then she started realizing that as she was walking, she had been looking back and forth at the trees… and that movement — that bilateral stimulation — is what sparked the creativity and research impetus for EMDR. It all started with the trees.”
It’s a reminder that even our quietest walks through nature can offer real pathways to healing. For Zach, this connection reinforces why trees and green spaces aren’t only nice to have, but also vital to mental and emotional well-being.
Pinewood Trees
What impacts have you observed in your environment?
Zach Korthals will never forget the night the sky turned violent. A powerful windstorm tore through Longview with the force of something far greater than anyone expected.
“In May of 2017, straight-line winds went through our area… There was this wave of force that just cut through that line, going through the town. We were convinced a tornado went through our city just because it was… [the winds] had to be up past 80 or 90 [miles per hour] easily in one straight little push.”
What followed wasn’t just property damage but a kind of erasure. The lush canopy in his backyard, once a place of peace and play for his family, was gone in an instant.
“We lost all the tree canopy in our backyard. It changed our ability to even just kind of exist in our space. Our yard became much hotter overnight and almost unbearable in the summer. We hardly could use our backyard when it was just too hot or too cold or too rainy, and that was devastating.”
He and his young son took shelter as the wind shook their home. When it was over, the view outside had transformed into something unrecognizable.
“Me and my son ran into the hallway and dove into the bathroom right when there’s like this huge whoosh of wind. And then when it’s done shaking the house… I look in our backyard, and all of our trees are on the ground, and it looks like a war zone back there.”
The devastating aftermath of Longview’s straight-line winds, with trees completely uprooted from the ground. Photos taken May 8, 2019.
How has this affected your community?
Zach describes the weeks of cleanup that followed and how the damage left a lasting mark on the region’s infrastructure and insurance landscape.
“Because of how fully it went from like the north to south line-ish of the city, the cleanup efforts lasted for a few weeks, just getting things off road and out of people’s yards. And overall insurance rates in our neck of the woods are impossible, almost, to get roof policies.”
The storm also had emotional impacts, especially on his children.
“We spent a lot of time in the backyard. Prior to this, my son had a favorite tree and everything like that, and he lost it. It was really hard on my kids, my son especially, who lived through it. He still talks about the day the trees are ripped up. It was a little traumatic for him, and so we’ve had to process a lot of that loss. ”
As a parent, he wants his children to grow up with a deep connection to their environment, to have the same joy and wonder he once felt.
“Seeing someone I care about affected so deeply by the loss of something he loved—it really stayed with me. It was the loss of a space we shared, a part of our everyday world. It affects me still to this day.”
How have you adapted to these circumstances?
Rather than accept the loss, Zach began rebuilding both the landscape and the sense of joy it once offered.
“We have plans for some birthday trees for my kids. We’re going to get some trees, and on their birthdays, they’re going to get to plant a tree. I have three now, and they’ll have their own little tree in our backyard.”
He also tapped into his organizational resources to expand reforestation efforts far beyond his home.
“We’re using our connections with Keep America Beautiful to get access to seedlings and other young trees. We have recently been granted a more than a million dollar grant to reforest our area. We’re going to be planting about 5,000 trees in our area over the next few years.”
“We’ve made a few adjustments in the way our yard is now, and we get to spend more time out there. But for a few years there, we hardly could use our backyard.”
Zach Korthals and the rest of the Keep Longview Beautiful Board of Directors
Looking Toward the Future
Zach hopes more people will see how environmental health and human well-being are intimately connected.
“There was a study done… where they planted between five and 10,000 trees, and they took even blood from their statistic population, and measured it before and after, and the blood work of the people improved as the tree population went up.”
He’s especially inspired by the idea that green space can be therapeutic and healing.
“Environmentalism in any form is also mental health, because we’re all talking about all this connection. It’s rooted in connection. A human is a product of their brain, body, mind, relationships and environment, and so the environment’s a huge part of that.”
Zach Korthals helps stabilize a newly planted tree.
Why Care for the Environment?
For Zach, it all comes back to connection and care.
“I really, really care about trees. Everything is connected more than we know, and I think that means we should be mindful of that and productive with it.“
He hopes the community will continue to heal and grow stronger through a shared commitment to the land they call home.
Jazmin Storrs
Jazmin Storrs is a student at the University of Texas at Austin, double majoring in International Relations and Humanities Honors, where she has designed a concentration titled Climate Policy, Human Rights, and the Media. As a Rapoport Community Service Scholar, Jazmin is recognized for her public service. She works as an Election Clerk to support voter access and recently traveled to Washington, D.C. to advocate for underserved communities.
As a Mobilize Green Intern, Jazmin supports Keep Texas Beautiful by leading storytelling on Texans’ environmental experiences. She is also the Climate Lead for UN Young Professionals and Vice Chair for Central Texas Model United Nations.
A violinist of over ten years, Jazmin earned 1st place at the 2022 New York National Orchestra Cup and performed at the International Midwest Clinic in 2023. Passionate about humanizing climate policy, Jazmin is dedicated to ensuring that everyday voices are represented in institutional spaces.
