sustainability

Exploring my roots on two wheels

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Have you ever arrived in someplace new and felt like you have been there before? I think we carry memories of our ancestors in our genes. Given what people are learning about how environment and behavior affect how genes are expressed, and given that expression of genes might affect how people pass them on to their offspring, I think it’s no longer a big stretch to say that we carry bits of the environment of our ancestors in our DNA. I felt it in Scotland. In Ireland. And in Germany. And I definitely felt it in the Netherlands.

Cycling the pathways that connect Dutch villages sometimes felt like riding a ribbon through a series of fairytales featuring my great-great grandparents.

Based on my 23andMe results, about 50% of my DNA originated in people who came from northern western mainland Europe, in the region that is now western Germany and The Netherlands. (The other 50% is a mix of ancestry from Sweden, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales). This is not a surprise. My maternal grandfather was born in and spent the first 10 years of his life in the region that now forms the western border of Germany and the northeastern corner of Holland. My maternal grandmother’s family also originated in northwestern Germany before they became farmers in ‘South Russia’, what is now the Ukraine.

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In the footsteps of the dinosaurs

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The desert always help me step deep back in time. I love that I can walk in a place that has been shaped by wind and water and deep earth processes more than by life itself. These landscapes were sculpted long before there was even a whisper of human evolution in the global gene pool.

Arches National Park in southwestern Utah in late May is sunshine and blue sky and bright red rocks that cast long shadows in the mornings and evenings. It’s also small white puffy clouds and heat that bakes you from all directions. We are in the park before 7am and out on the trail not much later, so we can be done before running the risk of evaporating right off the sand and rock.

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Resilience Amid Disruption

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(As a reminder, from my Disclaimer page: this site is not an official site of the University of Northern Colorado. The views expressed here are entirely those of the author, and do not represent the views of the University of Northern Colorado, the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science at UNC, nor any other program or individual at the university.)

Call to Action (if this is too long for you to read): Do one small thing to build resilience. And please share a good recipe for chocolate chip cookies that doesn’t require eggs.

Do you ever feel your words drowning before they pass through your lips? Like the rain beginning to fall just before sunrise. There’s something there that needs to shine out, but it gets lost in shadows. That is where my voice has been these past several months, lost in the shadows.

The world has zapped my energy. Floods, fires, drought, heat wave. Along with other climate scientists, I have spent the last 25 years shouting ‘the sky is falling’ over and over. Now that it is falling, many choose to be blind – afraid that recognizing it for what it is will ruin the world we’ve worked so hard to build. Sorry. The ruin is happening now because not enough people (especially people with power and money) have paid attention.

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