Finding my Voice

A magical moment as a solar storm brought the Northern Lights to some latitudes that rarely observe this spectacle, including the Las Vegas, New Mexico region. Here, the city lights of Las Vegas illuminate the sky, with the Sange De Cristol Mountains in the background and the Great Plains in the foreground.

Ever since I was a teaching assistant during my undergrad biology degree at Fort Lewis College, I knew teaching was what I wanted to do. I loved sharing wisdom with my peers, from helping Dr. Scott White in several GIS classes and watching as students became empowered cartographers to assisting Dr. Julie Korb and Dr. Cynthia Dott in teaching students how to collect complex environmental and ecological data in the field; my passion became teaching.

I never knew how to teach, nor did I know how to understand ecosystems. I just knew that understanding is empowerment. I was a bit of a doofus when I first arrived in college. I was seeking freedom more than intellect, I thought I was not capable nor intelligent enough for any path born from my own values. But a teacher changed that for me. Ayla Moore. Ayla taught me that I could build and support my own arguments with the power of rhetoric. She asked us to research love and helped us argue for our own perspective on love. We made online dating profiles, we read about neuro-science and the chemical cocktails of human hormones. We reflected on philisophy and spiritual views on love. Then we built and argued for our own stance on love.

I remember a friend saying, "It's just an assignment in a college class", in slight annoyance to my zest for getting to have a voice as I attempted to articulate what I thought a new lens on love would be. I tried to argue that love was too narrowly defined and used - how could we offer roses as a symbol of love if we do not also love the roses the soils, and the people that grew them transported them to the grocery store and sold them? Yet, it seemed in most literature in love - it was offered that we love specific humans and experiences. I am not sure how successful my rhetoric was, but I got an A and felt inspired.

On the slopes on Animas City mountain, beneath a broken cliff band formed by an old slump; ponderosa pine and Gambel oak forests made for a natural place to learn to love ecosystems.

During an elective class I had to take as part of my liberal arts education at Fort Lewis, I took an ecology class with Dr. Cynthia Dott. Cynthia took us on field trips and showed us how to recognize bark bettle signs and symptoms, including insects. Given my hobbies of biking and hiking, this modeling of the outside space with learning the names and stories behind patterns I had always seen but not understood growing up. Cynthia shone a light on a whole new world: ecology. During this class, I was an Economics major, which felt like a slightly less angsty way to fulfill my family's assumed route of business for college curricula rather than anything I was particularly proud to author. This class prompted me to change my major to Environmental Biology.

In my new pathway, the sciences became curiosity after curiosity. Ecology became exciting and thrilling, but the related disciplines of geology, chemistry and geography offered broader and more connected explanations in tandem with biology than biology alone. Dr. Ray Kenny opened my eyes to geomorphology and how much we can explain about complex and dynamic systems. He blew my mind, teaching us to measure boulders deposited by flood waters to calculate and estimate the flow of the historic flood. Dr. Gary Giannini shared how sediments are deposited and fossils, paleo worlds that live in stone, around us. Dr. Scott White connected me to the power of spatial analysis. Dr. Robert Milofski passionately explained wicked weird molecules and the power of bonds. Combined with rhetoric, the natural sciences became poetry for the world's complexities.

The more excited I became, the more involved I wanted to be. Dr. Julie Korb. This woman taught me, my passion and expression, combined with my skills I was learning in class, was worth of being paid. Julie not only shared her knowledge and wisdom, but she helped me expand my interests by showing me the nitty gritty of the science - peer reviewed papers, sampling design, statistics. Bringing together topics; Julie helped me get paid for work I was doing. She connected me with clubs and organizations, helped me develop leadership skills, planning skills, and coordination skills. She helped me get connected with TA programs and tutoring in the Native American Center; where I began to learn from my peers about ways they feel unserved by the sciences, and I began to see how important diversity was, in all walks of life.

Dr. Korb helped me continue to build experiences. She helped me fund my own research, provided the framework of an idea, and helped me incorporate my own thoughts. Over time, she connected me to jobs and helped me get into my PhD program. Julie showed me that my dream and passion for teaching were possible as a job despite my having no clue how anything "in the real world" works. Dr. Bowker, my PhD adviser, immediately trust my own choices and empowerment. He mentored me on how to be a more robust and better academic, enhaning and empahisizing statistics. Others with strong influence, Dr. Nancy Johnson tuaght me the strength of kindness and humility. Dr. Judy Springer helped me center on self and value mental health. There are too many people that have had positive influence to name; and this is important, because I am a first generation scientist, these mentors were my mentors.

This blog post is already too long, but the context is important. I survived. I got the degree. The doctorate, the (unnecessary) gold standard to be a educator at a four year university - a dream actualized. Well sort of. At the time my doctorate degree was awarded, I was working at a steak house in Durango, Colorado. I was too tired for a post-doc; I did not feel ready to follow the traditional path, and somehow I was just hoperfull for a job in the Four Corners. I was still backpacking guide - but not full time - and with some luck, I Aaron Kimple from Mountain Studies Institute met me for a coffee to offer me a job. Working in the non-profit, I learned a lot about facilitation, collaboration and goverenance. But I still yearned for teaching. Academic jobs are so rare. How could I teach? I should also mention here, this job sent me to a conference to present a recent publication from my dissertation (thank you), which is where I happened to meet Lauren, my now fíance.

A field class in Montant talks about the effects of the Anaconda Smelter on forests in the region and the remediation that has happened from the prior pollution-induced mortality.

Through a chance unfortunate event in a friend's life, I was offered an emergency hire position at Fort Lewis - a position that would evolve into a full-time instructor. Position, teaching at la..... COVID. ... well I guess I am still teaching. Not being tenure-track felt slightly limited. I wanted, I craved, to give to my university. College was so meaningful to me, I wanted to contribute to more ways to help students. Another conference. A job connection. Before manifesting any continuation of this story to transition away from Fort Lewis, I need to give a shout out to a student. Ian Crews. Teaching is hard, its challenging, I never really know what I am doing - more in my next post - but it is also so gratifying. I once had a student in my Introduction to Evolution and Diversity of Life class, Ian Crews. It was my first time teaching this course, and I was personally overwhelmed. I was striving for an interactive class while also learning the material a week ahead of teaching it. Ian was shy in class at first, but he slowly started lighting up - sharing stories of salamanders back home in North Carolina and so many other observations from his life journey. He began asking questions. Then came on a three-week field trip to Montant through Wild Rockies field institute with me. He needed out the whole time, asking myself and my con-instructor, Kelsey Patterson, question after question. What tree is this, Douglas-fir, right? Why do they form single species stand here? What bird was that? Does it eat insects? Where did the blister rust come from? Endless. Curiosity. I love seeing people grow and open their hearts to their passion, no matter what they are interested in. Now, I must say, Ian may be one of the biggest fisheries nerds I have ever met - and is graduating in December! go Ian!

In more ways than one, the reason I teach is the reason I became an excited student, because we all have a voice. In so many ways, ecology, or rather, Natural History, becomes the narrative I wrote about in my Love Rhetoric essay - if we choose to love it all, we can love more deeply. And in this way, it is no suprise at what my partner Lauren offers in the way of love. She, too, is a passionate person awestruck by the world and shares in the passion for sharing and empowering people with their passion.

Las Vegas, New Mexico, is a historic Spanish City formed as a land grant city with a Zocolo or Plaza to help protect it from raids. Once the largest city in New Mexico, Las Vegas rests at the toes of the southern Rocky Mountains, where the rivers flow to the plains.

I intended to write this post about life in Las Vegas, but it felt strange to do that without context. So I wanted to start with a bit of a story. I realized my last academic post, titled PhDepression, offers a glimpse of darkness in the journey, so I wanted to step back into the light.

Next, I will write a piece on my thoughts on academia and life in Las Vegas. Thanks for reading.