tucked away in the mountains, i was cradled by the soft towers of redwoods, the shush of the fog lazily passing through their leaves, and speckled, warm light whispering across my newly born cheeks. my eyes tracked the sway of redwoods from my first day of life, grasping to understand their constant conversation, their secret language. 

during the summer of 2020, my family and i had just moved to the city. we warily tracked the many wildfires that surrounded last chance on our phones. even then, miles away from the fires, the smoke choked the air around us. white ash would float down on us like twisted snowflakes. my mom looked up from her phone, her face drained. last chance is gone. it all burned, she said.

grief clawed at my chest. a thread that i had not fully appreciated–one that connected me to those trees no matter the time or distance–was singed. when we drove past last chance after the fire, we were stunned to silence. the wall of green was replaced with a sweeping darkness. the light that had woven through the forest to touch lucky eyes was now full of opaque ash. the swaying redwood towers were reduced to stiff, black sticks.

i could no longer hear even their softest conversation. the little wooden house that held playful racoons and guarded the memories of my first smiles, had been brought to the ground. 

when last chance burned, i forever lost a connection to myself and part of my family’s story. but california is a land of loss, one whose soils and peoples know too well the ache of utter destruction. the state of california was born in an era where the violent severance of connection to land was an industry. 

from the spanish missions in the 1700s through the discovery of gold a century later, the “california genocide” of indigenous nations has set ablaze the sacred histories, knowledge, and identities of generations of california native people. in this brutal campaign, indigenous systems of generosity, reciprocity, and love towards the land was driven to the edge of extinction, as were land sovereignty and rights. today, we are facing the repercussions of the imbalance and greed of a settler-colonialist society. 

i have spent my early career as an ecologist trying to understand how to regain the balance of our ecosystems while centering our human relationships to the land and each other. but the most basic environmental standards are being erased. new and massive fossil fuel projects are being proposed off of our coasts. 

my work– from monitoring arctic rivers to observing changes in wetland plant communities– is inherently slow, and the threat of the climate crisis is dauntingly fast. each paper that i write, every site that i survey, feels like a drop of water desperately thrown at flames that roar above my head. but the drop evaporates just from the heat. how can my two hands possibly hold a whole world on fire? 

as the climate crisis roars in fury, california will keep burning. we will lose stories, entire languages, and pieces of ourselves. but california is also a land of resistance. i am finding my way through the fire by learning with the survivors. 

through immense brutality and violent separation from their land, west coast tribes thrive. local communities and even the federal government have been beginning to understand the importance of integrating traditional ecological knowledge (tek) into the conservation and restoration of our natural lands. 

i refuse to lose that momentum – even as the current administration tightens its hold. as the daughter of an educator, i understand the importance of cultivating collective love for a place. it is slow work. and truthfully, we don’t have time to bring back all that was lost. but i can love my home and work my hardest to save a piece of it. 

part of that work is to push myself and my own community of ecologists, students, and educators to integrate traditional ecological knowledge (tek) wherever we can, from our schools to research institutions. today, indigenous groups lead the most hopeful environmental projects in the country like the undamming of the klamath river, the integration of cultural burns into yosemite national park, and the inter-tribal management of the chuckwalla national monument. simultaneously, i am investing in my own local ecological knowledge – the knowledge that is developed by staying. holding my love for this land, i see a way through the flames.  

i am now working at the woodwell climate research center in massachusetts, away from my family and away from the glowing forests and twinkling pacific ocean. until i make it back to her, i hold california in my heart wherever i go. when the flames of crisis surround my heart, i pull the memory of the redwoods and i conjure the soft winds of her hills. the flames lower. we cannot let our connection to the land burn. 

holding the inevitable loss of what we love, we must continue to invest in our local ecosystems however we can–see them flourishing and lean into their constant conversation. i will continue my work – tending to the recovery of our wetlands, coaxing the hidden meanders from our uncovered rivers – and when the speckled light from the regrown redwoods hits the cheeks of my own child, i will be able to show her what was burned, and what was saved.