For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved being outside, loved exploring nature, loved animals and plants and sunshine and snow. Understanding nature’s origins is, I believe, essential to understanding how I can (and should) live in the world: our trees provide us with oxygen, our ground provides us with food, and our rivers provide us with water. So nature is the basis of our existence – it’s why we are where we are today.
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Throughout my life, I’ve always connected to the outdoors. When I was three years old, my family moved to Colorado from Arizona. Our new house had a lot more space to run around in the backyard: we had a big open field in the front next to our driveway, and a big mountain in the back. I remember the excitement of picking flowers, the thrill of finding hidden spaces between branches, and the lung-busting triumph of climbing our backyard mountain. My siblings and I would take off our shoes and run around our house barefoot. We once piled-up big boulders for landscaping, but before we placed them in the garden, my siblings and I climbed all over them and raced to the highest rock!
Our lives revolved around the outdoors. We also loved caring for animals. We’ve had cows, chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits, pigs, horses, goats, dogs, cats, guinea pigs, birds. But none of our domestic animals compare to the big black bears that walked around our property.
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I’d like to be a classroom teacher, and I would love to take my class outside so they can learn about the beauty of nature that surrounds us. Just as important is teaching stewardship – I feel my connection with the outdoors is vital to my future career as an educator. Hopefully, I’ll be able to teach about all the wonders Mother Nature can offer. If I can help younger generations engage in experiences similar to mine at early stages of their school life, they can grow up with the same respect for the world they inhabit, and maintain the prosperity of our Earth. Because the world takes care of us in more ways we can imagine, we must care for it in return.
– April, 2020
