Pages from my everyday nature journal sorted into place-based StoryMap collections.
Meandering Ink.
From Cordova: Southcentral Alaska
Finding a sense of place and peace in interwoven passions
I spent three wonderful years living, learning, teaching, and sketching in Cordova, AK. These are Eyak lands, where today Eyak, Tlingit, Alutiiq, and Athabascan cultures come together. At the confluence of Prince William Sound and the Copper River Delta, these lands and their peoples nutured me to return to my roots of sketching and scientific curiosity. I am profoundly grateful to the mentors, both human and non, who gave me the space and the tools to begin this journey. The ways in which I view the world have been fundamentally shifted as a result.
From Fairbanks: Interior Alaska
Here’s to cold winters and cozy cabins. Where I now call home.
As an oceanography graduate student, I live paradoxically far from the marine environment. The less-developed infrastructure of Alaska means that the state’s only graduate school is located at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, at the heart of the interior. Here, I pass the cold winters in my dry cabin by painting and learning folk arts like woodworking, weaving, dying, and knitting. When the sun returns, I spend the shoulder seasons hiking and skiing, but spend most of my summers at sea.
From Pittsburgh: Appalachia
The land that raised me. Growing from and returning to the rolling hills.
I was born and raised in a small town north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to parents who did everything in their power to expose me to the natural world. My earliest memories consist of zoo trips and aquarium classes, of rivers and beaches and lighthouses. I remember nosing with lions through glass, feeling the slippery skin of orcas, and wiping river water from my eyes as I stood on the front of my mother's water skis. All of this instilled in me a deep-seeded curiosity for the biology of the planet. At the time, however, the Pennsylvanian ecosystems around me inspired few questions. It wasn’t until recent sojourns back to Appalachia that my eyes opened to the kin I grew up with: backyard birds, singing toads, and hardwood forests. My time in the region is now limited and sporadic, but my affection for it continues to grow.
To Galveston: Gulf Coast
Seeking Safe Harbor
Minute Meanders
