About Me and My Watson Project

On this page I've copied my Project Proposal and Personal Statement that I submitted to the Watson Foundation with my application. I'm happy to share them with you here, in case you would like to know more about me and what I intend for the year ahead. I hope these will guide me as I grow over the next year, and help frame my project.


MY PERSONAL STATEMENT

Dear Reader, if you will,

Listen for the small wind

in the letters,

hold out your hands

to catch the rain

in the gaps.

Know that

when you are not looking

she stirs.

Sharing my poetry with others is an intimate act. It is exhilarating: a bird-like feeling, opening my arms to the airy precipice of a ledge over a lush forest. Above is a stanza from one of my poems, called “Under,” in which I explore the feeling of being within a written poem, and the strangeness of sensation. That sense of wonder and connection with my surroundings inspires me both as a scientist and as a poet. Like Henry David Thoreau, the notable transcendentalist, I wish to live deliberately; like Aldo Leopold, the father of modern conservation, I wish to think like a mountain; like Mary Oliver, the contemporary nature poet, I wish to be among dunes, deer, and the “faces of the flowers.”

My dual pursuits between science and art have inspired and captivated me since childhood, when I donned rain boots and mucked through the Great Whately Swamp, a remnant oxbow of the Connecticut River across from my home, where I was first introduced to the marvels of the woods, the water, and the wild creatures that make the world magical and poetic. After my adventures, I would rush back to pencil and paper and spill my interpretations of the day’s finds: a flower that reminded me of my grandmother’s knitting, a coyote whose outline was just visible in the morning fog. As I grew older, my interests broadened, but I felt a constant guiding tether, like the stubborn roots of a dandelion, linking me back to nature and the writing it imbued in me.

Thus, when I entered college, it seemed entirely suitable to follow the example of the sunflower, and turn my head toward the light of my passions. I majored in Environmental Science, and threw myself into clubs and organizations such as the Outdoors Club, the Wheaton Woods Conservation Society (WWCS), and the Rushlight literary magazine, proudly rising to leadership positions in all three. I also got involved with ecological research, such as contributing to the certification of three vernal pools as legally protected wetlands under the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program (NHESP) and conducting collaborative research with Dr. Brennessel, the Massachusetts Audubon Society, and the Cape Cod National Seashore, on Diamondback Terrapins, an endangered marsh-dwelling turtle. Both of these positions provided me the opportunities to work out-of-doors in protected lands and waters, where wild species are championed for their intrinsic worth as members of complex and incredible ecosystems.

My mentors and peers throughout these projects instilled in me a deeper understanding of my world and its interconnectedness, but one memory in particular captures my desire to value nature more.  At sixteen, I did a few days of trail-crewing in the Bob Marshall Wilderness south of Glacier National Park in Montana with a volunteer group I had founded in my home town. We were guided by a young woman named Erin, a recent graduate in the field of art history, who taught me how to re-tread eroded trails, and sever fallen logs with a six-foot long double-toothed cross-cut saw. As we hiked and sang raucous songs to ward off grizzlies in the pines of the backwoods, I could think of no other word for Erin than intrepid, for that is what she was, and what I strive to be.

I hold myself to eco-centric values, framed on a more inclusive perspective than the traditional view of species and environments as either useful or harmful, because I believe an intrepid explorer aims to be unbiased. This can lead me, perhaps inevitably to strange habits: I find myself addressing the ferns and the fungi directly, sitting in silence at stream-sides hoping to glean some understanding of the languages I overhear in and over the water. I try to foster a low-impact lifestyle and coax out the poems that hide within the rabbit hutches of hollowed trees. My motives are selfish. As the vernal pools that collect the run-off of melting winter snows, I want to flood my life with the fullest sensory engagement of nature as I can.

Although my love lies largely with wildlife and wild places, I am deeply interested in the people who share in nature as well. That same volunteer group with which I met Erin in “The Bob,” also worked with larger organizations on projects as diverse as home construction with Habitat for Humanity in Guatemala, assisting a summer reading program in rural West Virginia, and various activities such as home repair, elder care, and camp counseling on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, Montana. These projects opened my eyes to the potential for positive impact by a small group of interested individuals.

Yet, I learned far more from the people with whom I lived and worked in these places than I offered through my volunteer work. For instance, Shane, in Beards Fork, West Virginia, who affectionately described himself as a gnome, gave me a lesson in storytelling as he added his tales of coal miners and scent of pipe-smoke to the campfire circle. Four elders of the Blackfeet Nation allowed me to participate in a sacred Sweat ritual, in which we crowded into a small hut, and sang syllabic tributes to nature, ancestors, and spirits, as the warmth of the rocks transferred to our bodies. During the second song, I watched the rocks in the sandy pit of the darkened hut burst under their own heat, casting embers that appeared to me as constellations. Such experiences prepared me and made me hungry for more extensive work and study outside of mainstream Western culture, which I have pursued in multiple excursions abroad during college.

I spent time in Central America studying coral reefs in Belize and tropical rainforest in Costa Rica, which provided me insight into a fascinating world of conservation and ecology. Witnessing first-hand the intensity of the biodiversity of life in the tropics drove me into a frenzy of bewilderment and vigor, especially on the day that I finally saw a Blue-jeans frog in the wild. These bright orange and blue poison dart frogs are smaller than a bottle cap, but can exude deadly toxins from their skin. I had researched them intensely in the classroom, and felt a surge of luckiness upon finding them in their natural habitat. I also traveled solo through Germany, volunteering on two organic farms, learning about traditional wine-making and old breeds of vegetables and livestock. I met Germans who grew up in the former GDR and gained new perspective on the meaning of agriculture and government regulation, but found commonalities in our appreciation of the beauty of nature, especially the small, interconnected lakes surrounding one of my host-family’s farms.

My most extensive experience abroad to date was my semester at the Royal Thimphu College in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. I interned at the Herbarium at the National Biodiversity Centre, helping with local collection expeditions and digitizing records of plant specimens collected in Bhutan from 1914 to the present. Bhutan taught me not to underestimate the inherent magic of the surrounding world. This was an ever-present lesson due to the kingdom’s impressive mountain landscapes, diverse forests, and active local deities. The deep-rooted cultural connection to nature among Bhutanese people instilled an even deeper devotion to investigating and celebrating the beauties and struggles intrinsic to the natural world that continue to awaken my awareness and concern for the environment.

This, and lessons like it, awakened a powerful excitement in me and a readiness to reach further and wider, like mycelium shoots spreading through soil. Yet, I am not sure I can ever shake the nervousness associated with these thrusts into the unknown. Perhaps it is unwise to search for such lessons, and less wise to do so without being nervous, but for the sake of science and art, I feel a duty to pursue curiosity to its bounds. It is challenging for me to form relationships with people, since I am disposed to be introverted and inclined to retreat to the comfort of my own company and that of the inanimate. I expect that crossing the initial boundaries to create connections with others will continue to be difficult for me, but as my past has taught me, once I push myself to make those  links, they are lasting, and stay in my heart. My greatest fear was once that I would be forgotten, but I have realized that such a fear is unfounded. Heisenberg’s principle tells us that even by observing, we alter, and Darwin’s theory of evolution tells us that all things are the result of earlier forms. Therefore, I cannot help but make an impact, and I am excited to do so, however small or transient. I am determined. I stir.






MY PROJECT PROPOSAL

The elevator pitch for my Watson year is that I am going in search of the relationships between nature conservation and creative writing, especially poetry. I want to learn about the ways nature inspires us, how we channel that inspiration, and what work and art we produce in doing so.

My project is called "When Nature Inspires: A Poet Goes Wild."

Margaret Atwood writes:

            “In this country the animals

have the faces of

animals.

            Their eyes

            flash once in car headlights

            and are gone.

            Their deaths are not elegant.

            They have the faces of

            no-one.”

and she reminds me that I too am an animal—a curious animal in search of the connections between wildlife and humanity. My studies and wanderlust have taught me that this relationship varies tremendously across cultures and ecosystems: ranging from the opinion of a friend in Austria who lamented the detachment she perceived between Europeans and their surroundings, to my mentor in Bhutan, who expressed the love and cultural value that she felt most Bhutanese hold for their wildlife, landscapes, and local deities. I wonder how the ties between humankind and the wild will change as we continue to develop, and how this change affects our expression of communion with nature. In his book, The End of Nature, Bill McKibben writes that there are no places or beings on earth unaffected by human impact on changing climates and the environment. Yet, E. O. Wilson proposed in his biophilia hypothesis that human beings have an innate evolutionary-based love of other living things and ecological systems. This suggests that as humans, we have a deep-seated affiliation with and affection for nature. I wish to investigate this paradox between humanity’s use of and adoration for nature by pursuing the questions: what does the wild mean to us? What happens when nature inspires us?

As an environmental scientist and a poet inspired by the natural world, I feel doubly dedicated to wildlife and habitat conservation. During my Watson year, I will go to immensely different ecosystems and cultures to learn what the local wildlife and people are willing to teach me about how they are affected and inspired by the wild. I hope to engage with the natural world and its writers, gaining an ever-deepening understanding of their motivations and connections with nature. Although the bond between humans and nature is conveyed differently across cultures, I am interested in the patterns that may emerge, and how these influence people personally and communally over time. The duality of the relationships between nature and writing motivates me to pursue my project in a two-fold process; this means that I will spend my time individually with the wild, as well as through connections with local writers.

My training in ecological research and peer writing tutoring, as well as a lifelong passion for poetry, give me the confidence to investigate the ways that our perceptions of and interactions with wildlife influence us as members of the complex systems involved in culture, spirituality, and ecology. A major goal of my experience as a Watson fellow is to immerse myself in culturally and ecologically diverse environments, and gain an understanding of their impact on local writing communities. I hope to engage with poets who write professionally, those who write in their spare time, as well as those who feel inspired by nature but are only beginning to channel their expression through writing. I believe that writing can be a very empowering tool, and communicating the back-and-forth influence of humanity and nature through writing helps us to understand the interconnectedness of the human and natural worlds. My project casts a tendril around this interconnectedness, by pursuing the way that concern for nature prompts writing, which in turn drawn attention back to nature in a cycle. The desire to express and form these connections is interwoven in human history, and seems to be gaining attention among writers, especially among those who identify as “eco-poets.”

I have chosen the following destination countries: Dominica, Botswana, Australia, and China. My work in each of my selected areas will guide me toward a different element of my overall goal of understanding nature as a source of inspiration. In each place, I will interact with locals and experts to investigate what the natural world means to them and how this influences their creative expression. I will also spend time alone in nature to discover the impact of each place and their respective inhabitants on my own writing. I hope to learn whether the relationship between people and wildlife/wilderness inspires the same senses and feelings in others as it does in me, such as awe, curiosity, fear, responsibility. I will hold writing workshops for adults and children to promote the expression of connection with nature through creative acts such as poetry. I expect to meet challenges, but am prepared to face them. Concerning language barriers, most of my intended sites are places where English is one of the main languages spoken, but I intend to learn at least a cursory conversational level of languages such as Creole and Mandarin Chinese, and hire translators when necessary.

I will begin in the small island nation of Dominica, in the Caribbean. Dominica is sometimes referred to as ‘the nature island of the Caribbean’ and has a complex indigenous and colonial history, all of which takes place on top of a geologically very young and very active location. It remains relatively small in population, and I find it particularly interesting as a site with rich biodiversity, many endemic species, and pristine mountains, forests, and hot springs. Nature writing seems to be a growing art form in Dominica, and seems to be influenced by the ethnic diversity and socio-political dimensions of life on the island, and I hope to delve into the seas and rainforests of this country through my own exploration and writing, as well as in that of Dominicans.

In Botswana, the interplay between economic development, eco-tourism, and wildlife conservation make this site ideal for understanding the way that nature shapes multidimensional aspects of our lives. I aim to volunteer in nature and wildlife preserves, engaging with local writers, game managers, and visitors, all of whom I imagine will have varied opinions on the roles of nature, conservation, and writing today and in the future. It is a complex scenario, made even more intriguing by the presence of such vast undeveloped and often protected lands, the multifaceted ancient and modern cultures represented, and the populations of some  of Earth’s most beloved and romanticized wildlife.

My time in Australia will present similarities with my work in Dominica and in Southern Africa, but it will be influenced by the unique attributes of Australia’s wildlife and cultures. I will continue to spend my time engaged in the outdoors, taking in the varied deserts and forests and reefs of Australia, as well as the writing culture of the country. I am drawn to Australia because of its reputation as ‘the deadliest continent’ because of the dangerous and often poisonous wildlife. I am also interested in the walkabout tradition of the Aborigine people, in which young men traditionally ventured into the outback alone, a practice I hope to channel and emulate.

My project will take the most dramatic change of course during my time in China. Rather than focus on the interactions of humans and nature in the wild as I will have done in my previous sites, I will turn my attention to the long tradition of gardening as art in China, in which people retreat from other dimensions of their lives into the beauty, comfort, and solace of the recreated natural world. This tradition also seems coupled with the creation of nature poetry written in ancient China, the practice of which continues today. I hope to divide my adventures in China between spending time in and around these gardens, working with nature poets, as well as engaging with the Chinese wilderness in similar ways as in my other destinations. I am interested most in how the practices of creating and maintaining these gardens has changed over time, who they are intended for, their cultural relevance, and what they mean to writers today.

By traveling to four different regions of the world during my Watson year, three of which will be brand new to me, I will open myself to the incredible vastness of life on our planet. I can hardly contain my excitement to witness and become involved with the locations and work of each person, animal, plant, and landscape I meet. I imagine my own repertoire of writing will expand through the new themes, forms, and sources of inspiration I seek and discover. In that regard, I believe T.S. Eliot was very close to the truth in his famous quote on exploration: that “the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” Throughout my year I hope to remember this sentiment, and carry the knowledge that beauty and inspiration can be found all along the journey, so much so that their transformative effect on the explorer makes the journey unending.