In my reading I focused a lot of my time on John Muir, a pioneer of the environmental and truly one of the most amazing thinkers I have ever learned about. He spent the majority of his life in Yosemite National Park, before it was a National Park, and was in large part responsible for it becoming one. John Muir grew up in Wisconsin after moving from Scotland when he was a young boy. From a very young age he was adventurous, to the point that it was many times dangerous. His adventurous spirit only grew with age and his journal entries and essays are incredibly entertaining, intense, educational, and inspiring.

Yvon Chouinard is another author I have focused a lot of my time on. Chouinard is the founder of Patagonia, the widely popular outdoor recreation brand (that is always within a stone’s throw in the Prairie hallways). In addition to being an immensely successful businessman, though, Yvon Chouinard is an environmentalist, author, philanthropist, activist, rock climber, and my imaginary grandfather. Very interested in the environment and business myself, I started my reading kick with the Chouinard book Responsible Company and loved every one of the economic and environmentally technical pages, each one leaving a lasting impact. Responsible Company then encourage me to read another Chouinard's book, Let My People Go Surfing. Yvon Chouinard’s The Responsible Company and Let My People Go Surfing, are incredibly insightful books offering a window into the world of commercial business which was very helpful to me as I am looking into majoring in business. The Responsible Company focused on the importance, and difficulty, of striving to run an environmentally responsible company on a large scale. The company at hand is Patagonia, an outdoor sportswear company started by Yvon Chouinard that has blossomed into a powerhouse in the sporting goods industry while maintaining a excellent reputation of environmental stewardship.

Into The Wild is one of my favorite books of all time and another product of my environmentally fueled reading binge. John Krakauer, the author, paints beautifully the story of vagabond Chris McCandless’s journey across America with limited supplies but endless amounts of determination, heart, and charisma. This book not only gives insight into the preparation needed to successfully survive on your own, but it makes you cautious to jump into things out of passion.  

I am currently reading Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang. Edward Abbey and this widely known book encouraged a whole new sort of environmental activism, eco-terrorism. The radical environmental group, Earth First, refers to Edward Abbey and The Monkey Wrench Gang as their grandfather and bible, respectively. Each and every one of these books says something widely different and teaches incredibly valuable lessons, yet they all share the same overbearing theme; the things we can learn from nature and the environment around us is of the utmost importance.

I have been reading the blog Natures Depths avidly for the past few months, written by John Palka, a retired biology professor from the University of Washington. His blog focuses more on the scientific aspect of nature than anything I have read this year. Like John Muir, John Palka regards nature in a human way. One of my favorite writing techniques is personification. Both Palka and Muir are great at incorporating it into their writing. Palka’s post about trees and their winter hibernation is what initially inspired me to travel to Philadelphia this spring and learn about tree biology and climbing techniques. I give Mr. Palka the credit for my newfound interest in trees, and my interest in science. There is so much to learn and learning is so fun in the way that he teaches. The blog is relatively young, he first posted in November of 2015. It makes it even more interesting that I have been able to track his entire blog, and get to read his posts as soon as they are published. I look forward to continuing my ecological education journey with this blog, and hope to reach out to Mr. Palka soon seeing as he is Gavin Lochtefeld’s grandfather

My goal in this process was to come to a better understanding of all of these texts, and synthesize them well enough to inspire others to read these books, find the same beauty in nature that these authors do, be it by publishing this online or including it in my end of the year presentation.