Living in Place: Reflections on Being a Naturalist with Justin Garwood

Note: Transcript generated by AI and not checked by a human. Please forgive any errors. 

Justin Garwood  0:00  
I think being a naturalist is just being in place and absorbing what's going on around you being mindful of the things you see taking note of that and using that information to enrich your life.

Michelle Fullner  0:14  
Hello, and welcome to Golden State naturalist, a podcast for anyone who has ever felt deeply connected with a particular place and wanted to know how to know that place even better. I'm Michelle Fullner. And today we're talking about what it means to be a naturalist with Justin Garwood, whose voice you just heard. In this episode, we discussed snorkeling and ponds what skills a naturalist needs and how to develop them and abundance of tadpoles glaciers in California, and how to cultivate deeper relationships with the landscapes and beings we love. And if this podcast has been helping you connect with the places you love, I hope you'll consider becoming a patron of the show for as little as $4 a month that $4 keeps the show going and gets you access to all kinds of cool extras like the patrons only Book Club, which is currently voting on what book we're going to read for next month. If you want to check that out or explore the other benefits of membership head over to patreon.com/michelle Fullner. That's Michelle with two L's and Fullner is fu ll en er, and if you want a way to support the show that doesn't cost any money, you can leave a rating or review on Spotify or Apple podcasts, which helps more people find the show or you can share an episode with a friend who loves either California or being outside or being outside in California. Also just a heads up. I usually publish an episode every other week during the podcast season, but I'll be taking a mini break to spend time with my family over the holidays and new episodes. We'll be back in January. But now let's get to the episode. Justin Garwood has a deep love for the Klamath mountains where we recorded this interview he was raised on the edge of the Trinity Alps in Lewiston, California and pursued his education at Cal Poly Humboldt, where he received a BS in fisheries and an MS in wildlife management. He's currently an environmental scientist for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife with a focus on managing fishes, amphibians and other aquatic fauna in Northern California's sub alpine lake basins. He was also a Smith River salmon biologist for 10 years. One of his long term research projects is studying population trends, demography and habitat restoration response in cascades frogs deep in the Trinity Alps wilderness Justin is also a co editor of the beautiful award winning book the Klamath mountains of natural history. So without further ado, let's hear from Justin Garwood on Golden State naturalist.

If you listen to the last episode on the Klamath mountains, you will recall that I had the privilege of spending the morning with not one but two naturalists and scientists of the Klamath mountains on a rainy day back in April. In the last episode, Michael Kaufman and I talked about the Klamath range and its incredible biodiversity, after which I sat down with Justin for this conversation on being a naturalist and Justin has a deep connection with this place where we sat in a mossy, temperate rainforest on camping chairs under a Port Orford cedar, occasional droplets splashing down onto us through the dense leaves above more about Justin's early connection with the natural world, what it means to know a place and how each of us can get better at it in just a moment.

Today on Golden State naturalist, we're exploring what it means to be a naturalist with Justin Garwood. And in his preface to the Klamath mountains a natural history. Justin describes his childhood growing up in Lewiston, California, a tiny town about an hour and a half east from where we sat for this interview in the Klamath mountains. He writes, looking back, I realized I became a naturalist as a child through innate curiosity in imprinting on annual phenological patterns. This idea of being a naturalist as a child captured me and I wanted to know more about Justin story. How did you become a naturalist? How did you become interested in nature?

Justin Garwood  4:35  
Yeah, until I was 18, the Klamath mountains were the only place I really knew I grew up here in a small town on the Trinity River. And I grew up in a great environment with my family and we live very simply, and I got to be exposed to nature as a child every day. And we didn't have a lot of amenities that city life has or even semi urban life, this is a remote area. So I had to do a lot of exploring on my own and around the house and property and then an extended into more extended journeys. And everything I imprinted on as a child was just what I saw. And it wasn't putting names on things. And I learned things very organically without that naturalistic approach that a lot of people like to name things and put, just put labels on stuff. And I, you know, I think as a child, you learn to just accept what's around you and turn it into something fun and joyous. And, you know, and that's how I felt about it looking back,

Michelle Fullner  5:35  
and is that what inspired you kind of those early experiences to becoming a biologist,

Justin Garwood  5:39  
I have an interesting path. I was not college bound. When I got out of high school, I actually went to work with my dad, who was a carpenter, and I learned carpentry. And I learned later that I was, you know, ready to do something new. I was young, I felt like I needed to go to school, but I was, you know, I kind of entered into the junior college realm. And I was actually going to school at the time to be a radiologic technician, you know, an x ray technician, and that you had to take biology classes to do that. And I took a biology class, and the professor just took me and from there on I it was a calling for me. And I completely changed my path and move forward into more of a hard science degree path later became a fisheries biologist got my degree at Cal Poly Humboldt, and fisheries.

Michelle Fullner  6:27  
If you're like me, you might have a somewhat fuzzy idea of what a fishery actually is. Oxford languages tells me it can be a place where Fisher rear for commercial purposes or a fishing ground or area where fish are caught, and I looked up Cal Poly Humboldt program on fisheries biology. And their website says that if you study fisheries biology with them, you'll become knowledgeable and practicing conservation, fishery management, aquaculture, water quality fish ecology and habitat restoration. The also note that they're the only fisheries biology program in California, which I did not know. Now, UC Davis might like to point out they have a department of wildlife, fish and conservation biology. But to be fair, that does sound more general. But I don't have a horse in this race. I was an English major. Okay, but what did Justin do after he got that fisheries

Justin Garwood  7:12  
degree after that went back to Cal Poly Humboldt got a degree in wildlife management, a master's degree. So that was a point in my life where it was a big learning curve to learn Western science and all the labels associated with it, you know, you got to cram a bunch of names in a short period of time, and it feels really rushed. It feels competitive. But it's also rewarding in some ways, because you know, it gets you really focused on things. So that was kind of a transition from my childhood, which is more innate to more of a process that is goal oriented, if you will, but that's when I really found I reentered nature in a different way I really wanted to learn, you know, ecology, names, distributions, all those things.

Michelle Fullner  7:56  
I love that Justin brought up the idea of names and knowing names. This is something I think about a lot as a naturalist, because learning names is a more multifaceted issue than it might at first appear. On the one hand, I think that knowing the name of a plant or animal allows us a path into a deeper relationship with that being a person's name is usually one of the first things we learn about them. It can be a little hook, we can hang other knowledge about the person on like their preferences, or what they're passionate about. And using someone's name is a way of acknowledging their identity and uniqueness. Learning the names of plants and animals can also give us a way to find out more about these organisms by telling us what we should type into a Google search, or what kinds of books we should read. So names can be a doorway into deeper knowledge and connection, they can be breadcrumbs, we follow into more learning. On the other hand, I don't like the idea that people need to know a lot of names and taxonomies before they can consider themselves to be naturalist. That's just an incredible barrier to entry in an area where all should be welcome and all of our learning, however incremental should be celebrated. And to complicate the naming issue further, the names humans give to things are made up by other humans and don't always capture the essence of a thing itself. For example, a lot of birds are named after humans that have nothing to do with the birds behavior, or lifecycles, or appearance in any way. And many of those humans they were named after were racists, even in slavers. And so those names are in no way illuminating about the birds themselves and also potentially harmful to people wanting to learn about the birds. Thankfully, just last month in November 2023, the American Ornithological Society announced in the words of one CNN article that all common English language names of bird species named after people will be changed along with other monitors that have been deemed offensive. In total approximately 70 to 80 Birds primarily in the US and Canada will be renamed. My hope is that this is one small step toward making the outdoors and study of nature more inclusive, and I also hope that people will learn the names of all the species they love and have relationships with. So they can continue to deepen those relationships. Going out on guided hikes, referencing local field guides, or just using apps like seek and AI naturalist can help with identification for anyone who's stuck. So learning names can be incredibly valuable. And it's great when people have done a lot of that learning, particularly when they've also cultivated long and reciprocal relationships with organisms and places. And their accumulated name knowledge is just one small part of each of those relationships. And I think Justin's story is a great example of this way of being, he started out as a kid making observations, not necessarily knowing what he was looking at, or what it was called, but starting to make sense of the landscapes around him through continued attention. Later, he dedicated himself to study in a way that was still grounded in a meaningful relationship with place, let's get back to his perspective on deepening those relationships. So what do you think of as what is a naturalist?

Justin Garwood  10:59  
I think a naturalist is just having the curiosity to what is around you, that's a minimum, I also think that you almost need to, you know, I feel at this point in my naturalist life, if you will, I feel comfortable being in landscapes, especially ones I know. And this comes down to this lived experience takes a lot of time to get comfortable with not knowing everything that's around you. There's a point where you're, I gotta know this, I gotta know that and you know, trying to learn the landscape is tough in a short period of time. But if you keep connecting with landscapes, place based learning, you know, what makes the Klamath mountains so special, and it sends you on a journey that is rewarding across your life, because that knowledge creates a sense that you kind of belong in this place, and you're comfortable with it, and you can absorb it in a more enlightened way. Because I don't need to know what that tree is over there. I know that's a Port Orford cedar, or I saw Ruby crowned kinglets in the in the riparian zone of this creek, they're there and I'm just picking up on the timing of things and what is out blooming right now. The Trillium are up, they're just starting to bloom, steelhead are running in the stream right next to us. And all those things are kind of background. And I love the experience of just being just settled, you know, and absorbing things. And I'm also seeing new things, there's always seems to learn, you're never, you're never going to figure out an ecosystem completely. And that's the magic of being a naturalist. Few things in the world are as inspiring as life itself, and how it responds to the physical world.

Michelle Fullner  12:36  
That's beautiful. I think that tell me if this resonates with you, I'm kind of an introvert. Like, I'm an introvert who loves people, right? But still, if I go to a party or something, I feel very uncomfortable and out of my element, but if I see someone I know at that party, then I'm like, Oh, thank God, right? Like, here's somebody I know. And when I go into the natural world, I sort of feel the same way. A little bit where it's like, Okay, I've gone into this space, and oh, there's a Valley oak. Okay, thank God, like, my friend is here. You know what I mean? And I feel like almost like I recognize that person, or that I feel more at home because I kind of get a sense of what's going on in that place. Absolutely.

Justin Garwood  13:11  
I mean, we humans are throughout our evolution, they're connected to nature. They're inseparable, right? Even though in this day and age, it's there's some pretty dramatic shifts and how we connect with the natural world or less. So should I say, but it's always powerful. And it does feel like an familiar friend, especially when you get to know it over a long period of time. And I'm a huge fan of play space knowledge. You know, a lot of people they leave where they grow up, but you go back to that place where you grew up as an adult and revisited it with a naturalist frame of mind, you're going to pick up things that you're going to connect with that you haven't connect with for years, perhaps decades. And it's gonna resonate, and you don't even need to know what species it is that plant or that it's going to resonate with you because it's making a connection to your childhood. So I think landscapes do that to us. They allow us to bridge the life of a human and how we connect with our environment.

Michelle Fullner  14:10  
Yeah, I was actually I had a question about that for you. Like, how important do you think it is, for somebody wanting to be a naturalist, right? Trying to kind of take on that mantle to have a deep connection with a specific place versus maybe having a broader connection with a lot of places.

Justin Garwood  14:26  
I generally like to do both. I do love to travel and traveling throughout California is always an amazing adventure because it's so diverse, both geologically and biologically. So I think there's multiple ways about this, but the place where you live and the landscape around it, if you spend a lot of time outdoors, you're going to make deep connections with that landscape, especially as a naturalist because a naturalist is you're being intended to soak up what's around you at different times of the year at different you know, locations. All those things kind of build this knowledge that you have throughout your life, when you travel across, say, California or the west or go through the deserts, you're a visitor. And I always like to spend more than a day at a place, I almost feel three days minimum for me is really where I start feeling comfortable in a place enough to feel like I'm existing there as a part of it. As opposed to just being a tourist, this visit, you're exposed to the not only the plants, and animals and geology and everything, everything that makes up that ecosystem, you're exposed to the elements at that time at that place. And it takes time to absorb that. And I think you get a richer experience. There's other times where you have an afternoon and you want to go birding. So those are like I consider that kind of stuff is like working on your naturalist skills, if you will. So when you're out here like today, I don't need to look up a Ruby crowned kinglet. Because I saw a whole flock of them. I just heard them and knew that's cool. They're there. I knew that because I studied them really hard at one time. Right,

Michelle Fullner  16:00  
right. And now, as you go into the natural world, those pieces can come together organically. Absolutely. And you can feel that sense of place around you. I want to get into you. You talked a little bit about naturalists skills. And I'm curious what you would say for somebody who's kind of starting out, like, I have this interest in nature, but I don't really know how to be a naturalist, what kind of skills does somebody like that maybe need to start to work on to start to feel comfortable to be able to say, Yeah, I'm a naturalist.

Justin Garwood  16:29  
I think if you just open yourself up to what's around New Year naturalist, you don't need to know the names of things. Some of my best friends, naturalists, you know, they're not even biologists. So, you know, one, one guy that's really close friend of mine is a truck driver. And he knows so much more than a lot of people that I know, because he pays attention. He's done it for a long period of time. But you know, I think it's just accepting that you don't know everything it's going to take a long time to, especially in diverse systems to learn it. But that's okay. Because it's a journey. It's really about patterns through time seeing things in different seasons. And seeing the phenology that is the lifecycle of, say, a mushroom, when does it pop up, and when does it disappear, we have to get on the landscape to see that and that lived experience. As a young naturalist entering into this, this experience of being a naturalist, it just adds up to a much richer experience every time you go out. Because you're building on, you know, you may only learn a few things on that first outing. But keep going back, go home, study your field guides, you don't have to have them out in the field all the time, that might put blind spots on other things that you're going to see. Take notes, look at patterns. And that's what I do, I kind of keep my field books in the car or at home. And sometimes I take notes, and the notes are really rewarding to look back and on because it's part of your journey. And you know, I have notes from 15 years ago that I reread. And it just brings all that back and what I was thinking at the time, and then all the experience across those 15 years since then, it really makes you think about it differently. And it's really fascinating to revisit those. So

Michelle Fullner  18:10  
it gives you those are kind of ways in sort of observation skills and sort of opening yourself up to observations. And as you're doing that, I'm starting to hear you talk about tools that you use as well like a notebook. And so it's a good idea to carry a notebook with you are there any other tools that you recommend that people have on hand as they go and connect to the natural world,

Justin Garwood  18:31  
it depends on what you're doing. You know, I don't typically like to carry a lot of things with me, but there's times when I'm prepared. I'm an aquatic biologist, I work in ponds and wetlands and lakes and rivers. And those places, you know, you got to be a little more prepared. For example, I really am a huge fan of snorkeling in rivers and ponds and lakes and you got to have some gear for that you got to have a mask and a you know, obviously mask and snorkel you may need a wetsuit, but it allows you to do it. It allows you to see fish in their natural environment. So it's really rewarding. Obviously, if you're birding binoculars are an important feature for site birding. But you know, don't rule out learning calls because sometimes you want seabirds and those calls are very important to know. That's a pretty big learning curve. But it's a good goal if you're really into ornithology, and then visiting places that you want to have the right footwear. I'm a big fan of going out off trail, going to places that you don't feel as comfortable, I guess it's more rugged. But when you get used to walking through those environments, you're seeing different things than what's on a trail. But also you're seeing patterns that are not groomed, if this is these are wild places. And sometimes these adventures could be days they could be hours, but when I go out for an extended period, you always want to be prepared. Say if you're off trail and it's in a good distance, be prepared to spend the night because who knows what's going to happen right? And you know, I feel and crews that work with me. And I always tell them if you're going to go off on a day hike during work, you must carry a headlamp and clothing to survive the night. And enough food and water. Basic stuff. I mean, we have more fancy things like GPS and messaging things so we can stay in touch with our crews. But at the same time, those can fail as well. So I say be prepared. You know, I'm not telling people to do extreme things necessarily. But if you are a naturalist who likes to go off trail and go deep in the woods, and explore places without trails, you're gonna see amazing things, you're gonna see amazing wildlife, you're gonna get a different perspective. But you got to be prepared for that with your clothing, footwear survival and having a check in system with with other people. In

Michelle Fullner  20:46  
the 1930s a Seattle based outdoor community called the Mountaineers came up with a list of 10 essential items that should be carried at all times by anyone venturing into the great outdoors. That list has been tweaked and improved over the intervening decades. And now it's widely acknowledged as a good idea to always have these items. Here's a list from the National Park Service website, one navigation so map compass and GPS system to sun protection sunglasses, sunscreen and hat three insulation jacket, hat gloves, rain shell and thermal underwear for illumination, flashlight lantern, and headlamp five first aid supplies six fire so matches lighter and firestarters seven repair kit and tools, so duct tape, knife, screwdriver, and scissors, eight nutrition so food, nine hydration, so water and water treatment supplies and 10 emergency shelter. So tent space blanket tarp, or bivy, which is like a sack or tiny tent that goes just over your sleeping bag or just over you in an emergency. And you don't need to carry every single one of those items I mentioned, but rather a functional representation of each of the 10 groups, I'll link this list in the show notes in case you want to take a closer look at it. And most of these items are light and take up a tiny amount of space. So I keep them in my day pack at all times and recommend that everyone do the same, it's possible to get hopelessly lost even when staying on the trail. So bring these along and don't die of exposure. So

Justin Garwood  22:12  
I brought that up because I that I do that a lot. I work in sub Alpine wilderness zones with for my job. So we're always remote. So it's always on our mind. Right?

Michelle Fullner  22:22  
And what about there's a whole school of thought of like no stay on the trail, because you might be kind of wrecking, you know, the habitat around. So where do you find a balance in those things? And how do you know that you're not doing too much damage kind of.

Justin Garwood  22:33  
And that's important because California has over 30 million people right here where we are in the Klamath range. Walking off trail here is not a big deal at all, because we are very remote and we're but whereas if you're in a park, or you're at a busy place in more of an urban setting, definitely have to pay attention to our impact. And you know, those off trail adventures turned into social trails and social trails, you know, create havoc

Michelle Fullner  23:03  
social trails are unofficial trails that form because lots of people walk off trail in the same place. You might have heard about these being a big problem with wildflowers, which often can't grow in compacted soil. And when lots of people are going out to see super blooms of California poppies, or lupins, or other beautiful native wildflowers that I'm so glad people want to go see they sometimes end up going off the official trails and trampling and compacting the delicate soils so badly that the wildflowers won't grow back in those places anytime soon. So it's especially important in those situations to stay on trails and get that perfect wildflower selfie from the main trail. But social trails can be a problem beyond super blooms and harming other delicate habitats. The National Park Service points out that social trails can also cause people to get lost, because sometimes these unofficial trails get so well worn that they start to look like official trails, which is confusing for hikers who don't know the area well. So

Justin Garwood  23:58  
you definitely there's places where you do need to stay on trail and those are the more popular zones. But that's okay, you're taking care of that environment that gets a lot of visitation. And that place is important to touch people in nature. They live in cities that perhaps don't have that opportunity in their daily life. Sure.

Michelle Fullner  24:16  
So staying mindful to the kind of place that you're in and the potential impact that you might be having. Right? That's great. So if you're in say Griffith Park in LA or a popular hiking spot close to any large town or city or anywhere with signs telling you about potential dangers or active habitat restoration, that's when you should stay on the trail 94% of California's 39 million people live in urban areas, and the hiking spots closest to those urban centers are going to be places to stay on trails because there are a lot of us and ecosystems just can't take that kind of outpouring of love in the form of foot traffic. So most of us will have to do a bit of driving before we're in a place where it's okay to go exploring off trail. Also remember to bring those tennis Central's with you if you do this and don't I have exposure, and a lot of what I'm hearing you say to like going snorkeling and a pot like I love that image by the way, just like going in and I imagine just hiking down a trail and then seeing a guy snorkeling and upon is a walk along and you just don't see that every day or, you know, getting off trail and doing something totally different. Those to me shout just change in perspective, right? There's very opportunities to get a different perspective on a place, you might stand there and look at that pond might stand there for an hour and look at that pond. And you see something very different if you get inside of that pond. Oh, it opens

Justin Garwood  25:36  
up a world that that is unbelievable to see things. If you go into a pond with a faceplate on and you're looking around, you're seeing so much life that you would never see from a from land. One tool that I recommend people that are around water that don't get into water is polarized sunglasses, there, they offer an amazing view into water when especially in certain cases, when you have a glare, they really open up your ability to see things so that's another great tool that we use in our jobs. As aquatic scientists, we visually search for things a lot sunglasses is like mandatory for doing salmon and steelhead spawning surveys are doing are doing amphibian surveys and lakes, if there's glare, you're not going to see your target. But when you actually slip into an environment that's foreign to to humans, in a sense that you know, we're not an aquatic species with we can't open our eyes underwater and see clearly a face plate allows that to happen. And it's such a joy to be a visitor to those places it with going in and there's places where I snorkel survey and I you swimming with Western pond turtles, you're swimming with newts, and then you have the search image for all these things. And then you focus what's right in front of you. This happened to me as in the middle of a pond, and I was looking for turtles with my friend. And he goes, have you seen those big daphnia you know, which is the zooplankton. They're everywhere. It's like a pea soup and all sudden, I refocused my eyes to what was right in front of me. And all sudden, there was a soup of zooplankton. And I was so focused on other things that that search image I wasn't really tuned to. So search image really influences what we see as naturalist, you know, you're going to focus on certain things, but remind yourself to kind of broaden that horizon sometimes and you'll be exposed to completely new novel things that you never would have seen, you know, and that's the beauty of sharing natural history with others, too, is you pick up from what other people see,

Michelle Fullner  27:38  
there's so much in kind of being in community with people and learning from them. And I'm wondering too, about other ways. You've talked about snorkeling in ponds, you've talked about going off trail, and wondering if you have any stories that you want to share about ways that you've gotten a perspective shift, or times that you've done something maybe unconventional, that yielded maybe a lot of learning about the natural world. So

Justin Garwood  27:59  
yeah, I back in 2009, I was finishing my master's degree and I there's a place I've always wanted to go to in the Klamath mountains that I had suspected and heard that there is these glaciers, these small glaciers that were still remaining, and I've worked around these places, I've looked up there, and I've always seen snow. And so they were presumed to be these glaciers. And it's significant because if you look across California, the highest glaciers are on Mount Shasta. And then the glaciers throughout the Sierra Nevada. You know, they're all the other glaciers in California are about 1700 feet higher than those that would be in the Klamath mountains. So I went to this location. It's up below Thompson peak and Caesar cap in the Trinity Alps to see if there's these indeed these glaciers, and it was a week long adventure off trail for me, I went up there. It's a very rugged landscape. And I show up and I started walking around these features, and it just floored me because they were indeed glaciers, I'd read a there's a great natural history book by Bill Guyton glaciers of California. It's a great natural history of ice. It's really fun read, but I took that with me. I read the book from cover to cover and I go there. So I had all the attributes I needed to define are these glaciers are not as a complete novice. And I came out of there just really lated by what I saw, because these things were stagnant. They were actually moving at the time making sounds, the water rushing off them. It was really magical. But they also seem like they were in trouble. So I came back and I got together with a bunch of other naturalist friends and I said you guys need to come up to and see this. So we went back the following year, and the place was silent and covered in snow because it was a big snow year, year before it was a light snow year. So I started learning like oh, the dynamics of these glaciers. They're tucked into these North East facing head walls of these the highest peaks of the Trinity Alps. Their niche is so tiny It's the coldest snack in the entire mountain range. And they're able to persist their, you know, over 130 years past a little ice age. All this was like giant epiphanies for me being a local, and the fact that there was really nobody studying them or marking what their status was put me on a mission to track them. And I thought I was just going to do a single year or two and say, here's two glaciers, they still exist, and they're this big. But then the, I'm gonna call it the great California drought happened 2013 to 2022. And I had spent those 12 or so years at that point, just happened to be there at that time, the demise of the glacial ice in the Klamath mountains. And last fall, well, Sam and Glacier melted off and by 2015, was slightly lower elevation and grizzly glacier melt off last fall completely. So we've entered a new climate kind of regime, I think, in this region, because of the light loss of that ice. Ice either grows or it melts. It's very, it's a very linear thing, right? So I feel like we've crossed a boundary. And that's important to know, locally, like picking up that local knowledge on climate change and sharing it. I'm not a glaciologist, I don't claim to be at all I claim to be a community scientist that was interested in I took that path. And there's others involved. We've got more people involved, and even glacier people. And it was really fun to connect with those people because they they accepted that I was a total novice. And one funny thing that I asked one of my colleagues who is glaciologists, I said, you want to join some knuckleheads to do this glacier monitoring with us. And he goes, he gets back to me with an email and he says, a snuggle has got to stick together. So I was like it brought down because, you know, he's named Dr. Andrew fountain, and he's at Portland State University. And he studies glaciers around the world. He's an authority, right? But he loved the passion of us, you know, these naturalists that wanted to take this on, and he was a great mentor for that. It's a sad story. But it's also I'm really resolute about because it's not the Greenland ice sheet or Antarctica, cleaving giant sections of glaciers. It's local, it's here. It's measurable. And it's an important story to document and tell.

Michelle Fullner  32:29  
And if you're interested in that story, there's a great 2020 article in backpacker on Justin's work on grizzly glacier, I'll link it in the show notes in case you want to learn more. And I think, yeah, you've mentioned elsewhere too, about this idea of bringing global issues home. And I really liked that. And I'm wondering if you have any advice for anyone who is wanting to see global issues on a local scale, kind of how they can start to look for. And notice those things?

Justin Garwood  32:55  
Well, disturbance regimes. These are things that are natural processes in an ecosystem such as fire, such as floods, even animals or disturbance regimes, you know, some of the downed logs around here, bears are tearing them apart to get grubs. And when they tear these down logs apart, that creates habitat for other critters, such as salamanders. So there's lots of disturbance regimes out there visiting these these events when they are catastrophic, or just out of line with their renewing capacity that they'd normally kind of, you know, like fire has a renewing capacity to landscapes, or it could absolutely scorching entire area, to nothing where that forest might not come back.

Michelle Fullner  33:42  
If you haven't already, make sure to check out the fire Recology episode with Robin Lee Carlson to learn more about what makes a good fire versus a bad fire.

Justin Garwood  33:51  
I think visiting places that have experienced maybe more extreme disturbance regimes is really eye opening as a naturalist, because you really see how it plays changes, and especially places that you know, that have seen massive wildfire, massive floods go through that it's such a dramatic change that when you witness that firsthand, it allows you to just absorb what's going on locally, and how it's going to impact the environment that you live in imprint on. So I've done that this last year I visited places that I use words like apocalyptic to describe some of the flooding that I've seen on top of recent wildfire. You may have heard of the Klamath fish kill that happened in 2022 from the McKinney fire, which was up by y Rica. That fight we had a rainstorm come through that area around the first of August right after that wildfires started, and it completely devastated streams to the point where the Klamath River we had many 10s of 1000s of dead fish because they couldn't breathe. There's too much sediment in the stream. Wow. Well, that same rain cell can I'm over places where I work like where the glaciers are. And I was up in the sub Alpine zone. And it had come over this area that had burned in the early 2000s. It reburn and 2021. So there was no wood on the ground to stop water from shedding super steep landscape. And it absolutely destroyed every stream in that area to the point it was unrecognizable. And it's going to take many decades for that place to recover. So seeing that is very eye opening, but also it makes you more resolute in what's going on? Well, I

Michelle Fullner  35:35  
think that what's really powerful there too, is that, at least for me, and I think that I probably can speak for a lot of people on this. It's very easy, in this day and age to become desensitized to all of the doom and gloom, right? Like we see these images, the Greenland ice sheet, we see all these things on the news about these massive wildfires and climate change, you know, and I think that it's very easy the most, the best way to survive that I think for a lot of us is to just shut your brain off. Right? I can't cope with that I can't cope with the idea that my world is changing so radically, that it's going to make it hard for my children to survive in this world, right. And the easiest thing to do is to pretend it's not happening. And I think that if we can then go on this local scale, and actually bear witness, right to something local, that's happening to a place, we maybe knew what it looked like before. And now we can compare it to what it looks like now, it's a way to kind of open yourself back up to feeling something again, and to experiencing something that maybe we've shut our brains and our our hearts off to,

Justin Garwood  36:42  
right global issues are really difficult to comprehend. Because you don't have that kind of play space experience to connect with it. Becoming familiar with the landscape allows you to also see how the biota respond to physical change, the biological world can respond to pretty dramatic changes. And quickly some species will take advantage of a disturbance, whereas others will not benefit at all. And actually, it'll cause them to have to seek refuge in other places. But it's that amazing adaptability that biodiversity has to continue. And it's been doing it for eons. And it's how everything is evolved today to what it is. So take example the the glacier stuff I was telling you about. There's a species of beetle that was described on that grizzly glacier, one of the glaciers in 2009. It was a new species. And it was predicted to be there. David Kavanaugh, from Cal Academy of Sciences. He studies this genus of beetles around the world. And he predicted they were there. And sure enough, they found them at this site because they're a cold loving beetle, they need ice or cold zones to survive. And the only habitat for that beetle so far has been that piece of ice. When I started monitoring that piece of ice, it was around eight acres. Okay, now it's gone. And that beetle, that's the habitat where it exists. And a question is posed is what's going to happen to that beetle. But it's a tough conservation issue. Because we salmon, there's lots of streams, we can fix some streams, and try to maintain salmon populations through having lots of habitat available to them. What do you have a beetle like that's endemic to this piece of ice per se? Is it going to adapt? Or is it going to perish? And that's a great thing to think about because that I was only it's not from the Pleistocene, it's only about 700 years old. It's from the Little Ice Age,

Michelle Fullner  38:44  
the Little Ice Age was a global cool period between about the years 13 118 50. It's not fully understood why this cooling occurred. But it probably had to do with a decrease in solar activity and an increase in volcanic activity, among other factors. And the result was a planet that was about a half a degree Celsius, cooler on average, and up to two degrees Celsius cooler in some places currently, because of anthropogenic climate change. Temperatures are 1.1 degrees warmer than the pre industrial global average. So these small glaciers and the endemic beetles living on them have had a lot to contend with.

Justin Garwood  39:22  
So that Beetle was around before that ice. But as climate change taken us so far out that somehow these species cannot adapt, that's yet to be determined.

Michelle Fullner  39:32  
Like it was hanging on in that one last refuge. Yeah. And then if that refuge disappears, then where does the beetle go?

Justin Garwood  39:37  
Exactly.

Michelle Fullner  39:38  
So since this beetle existed before the Little Ice Age before grizzly glacier existed, there's a chance it will find a way to keep living now that the glacier is gone. We just don't know yet either way. Another question I'm wondering about is, I think for me as somebody who is used to living in a city and having a faster pace of life It can be hard for me to cultivate the kind of stillness that I think can sometimes be required to make really deep observations, like I tend to be sort of this anxious moving ball of kinetic energy. Sometimes I just kind of want to move around and look at stuff. And I'm wondering if you have any suggestions for how people can cultivate a sense of peace or stillness inside of themselves, to allow the world to open up.

Justin Garwood  40:23  
That's definitely something that's difficult to do with a busy life, especially if you have children, you know, you're out with friends, when you're out with friends, you tend to have conversation, there's some amazing things you can see if you can have moments of silence and focus in nature. Some of the most novel things I've seen are by sitting and just taking it in, there's a pond that I have a long term monitoring project on a species of frog, the Cascades frog, I've been studying this frog in this area for 20 years. Now, this is going into 21. And it's one animal I can say that I probably could be an authority on to some degree, but I definitely don't know everything, but 20 years, and I've learned a lot about the animal. But one thing I never really did was sit on a pond and in the fall when there's tons of tadpoles of this frog and their their metamorphosis scene, and they're along the margins. There's tadpoles with legs, but they're not quite out yet. They're just starting to become terrestrial adults. But the pond is a place of intense fury, because lots of things are eating them as they're coming out. This is wild nature. So there's snakes there, which I see a lot but I always saw a lot of bird tracks. So one day, I was doing my work a little early, and I hid inside some Tallis at this pond. So I'm gonna watch this. I have my binoculars dump sitting there. And then to Clark's nutcrackers, which are at bird that's the corvid and they have this mutualistic relationship with white bark pines, and they think they're obligate seed eaters, and they cast their seeds. And that's how white bark pine forest exists, because they're planted by seeds that are left behind. So there's this really strong relationship, but in the fall, I saw him eating tadpoles and froglets they were getting them off the shore of this pond, and what a great like short period of protein for those animals to capitalize on because the amphibians, there's 1000s of tadpoles. I also saw at that same point, American dippers feeding on tadpoles, American dippers are thought of as a stream bird, but they come up into these high elevation lakes, and they use them as like a summer habitat before they freeze over. And they overwinter and lower in streams. So they're taking advantage of this pond, American robins were in there coming in, and chipmunks were eating them. And all this like happened within an hour. And if I wouldn't have taken the time to do that, I never would have known all those connections between those consumers and pray, and it was just an hour. So I do encourage people to just sit.

Michelle Fullner  42:57  
So maybe part of cultivating stillness is knowing that it's worthwhile, that there are deeper observations or novel observations to be made through stillness. And if you're like me, and you aren't quite ready to try this for an hour, try being still in nature, which includes a city street with a dandelion growing on it for five minutes, or even five breaths, because wherever you need to start is a good place to start, and will help you build stamina for longer periods. I've also found that being still with a notebook or nature journal can be a huge help, I can practice deeper observations by drawing something I'm seeing. And even if it's an awful drawing, it's making me look more closely and notice more detail. And I'm still recording information that I can go back to and reference later. The same goes for taking notes or writing poetry, essays, or stories inspired by a place. Okay, but let's hear what Justin's next adventure in stillness is going to be one

Justin Garwood  43:49  
thing I've always wanted to do, and I've never had the opportunity is to sit at a stream for an entire day from like, morning to evening, and just watch what happens. Watch what goes by, because it's dynamic system. Stuff is always moving through. I don't I'm just curious, but I've never myself have gotten to do that, because that's a decent investment in time.

Michelle Fullner  44:11  
It really is. And, and I think it takes a certain amount, at least for me, right? It is hard for me to sit still in a place for 10 minutes if I don't have an activity, right, right. I'm so used to the pace of life in my more urban suburban setting. And it's very hard for me to adapt that piece to somewhere else and to do sunup to sundown, that would be an exercise in mindfulness on a level that most of us are.

Justin Garwood  44:38  
Absolutely being in nature is so calming, no matter what you're doing, but definitely if you take moments to just soak in with your senses, all your senses, we're in a rainstorm right now and it's the sun's out. And all the all the branches of this Port Orford cedar glistening, and I can smell the rain. It's amazing. A lot of people would be like it's raining, let's get in the car. Right but you'd miss out on this magical setting where we are in the moss is electric right now,

Michelle Fullner  45:11  
I just saw a raindrop hit this giant flake of lichen. And then just that it just bounced up and down, right? Like, it's just this tiny thing. That's an observation that you have to be close. And you kind of have to be still, to a certain extent. Absolutely. I really liked Justin's suggestion about using all of our senses. I've mentioned this on the podcast before. But there's a great mindfulness exercise where you simply go down the list of your senses. And first notice five things that you can see followed by four things you can feel three things you can hear two things you can smell. And one thing you can taste, of course, making informed choices about what you touch and taste. I love this exercise for any time. I feel like I need to connect my brain back to my body, but it's particularly great for being outside and finding a way to be fully present. Are there any myths about being a naturalist that you would like to debunk? Being

Justin Garwood  46:03  
a naturalist natural history is a label for connecting yourself to the natural world. And sometimes that label can be interpreted as it's a separate thing. It's like, oh, you're being you're being a naturalist, you know, you want to live as a naturalist cities have lots of things that are novel in an ecosystem perspective. It's a novel ecosystem, but you're gonna see nature there as well. I think being a naturalist is just being in place, hmm. and absorbing what's going on around you being mindful of the things you see, taking note of that and using that information to enrich your life. I'm

Michelle Fullner  46:42  
going to get to what I love about Justin's definition of the word naturalist in just a moment. But first, I have to share some top notch trivia with you. Did you know that one now obsolete meaning of the word naturalist was taxidermist, another one was a person who follows their natural impulses. I don't think these two definitions were ever combined, though, or we'd have a person who was driven by their natural impulses to do taxidermy. But the current definition of a person who is an expert in or student of natural history was first used in the year 1600 And then exploded in popularity in the mid 1800s. After the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, my friend Tori very generously used her OED subscription to look that up for me. And when I heard those dates, a question started to percolate in my mind. So on a hunch, I looked up the history of urbanization in Great Britain and the NIH as a page that says urbanization proceeded across the period 1600 to 1800, but accelerated in the first half of the 19th century. By 1851. Over half the population lived in settlements of 2500, or more peaking at around 80% by the 1890s. Now these two graphs, British urbanization and popularity of the word naturalist and English are similar but not identical. And I'm not arguing that there's a causal relationship between them. But the fact that the word naturalist became popular in English, right as Great Britain was urbanizing makes me wonder if we only needed a word like naturalist in English, once most English speakers had a less direct relationship with the Earth, maybe before urbanization, for people who relied on the weather and the plants and the animals around them to live, being a naturalist would just be being alive, no fancy word needed. But now the connection between us and the land is less apparent. Most of us don't see the farms where our food is grown, or the way that minerals from the earth are transformed into iPhones, or even how water ends up in our tabs. But what I love about Justin's definition of the word naturalist, which is about being in place and attentive to place, is that it can help us start to see those connections again, regardless of where we live. And while attending to our direct surroundings won't necessarily show us the farm where our food is grown, and might help us expand our curiosity about how all of these systems come together. It might remind us that everything on earth comes from the earth and goes back to the earth. And it might prompt us to get curious about what that means and what are places in all of it. And all of that curiosity and expansion of perspective can start with noticing what's around us, whether in our cities or in a remote part of the Klamath mountains.

Justin Garwood  49:18  
Like today we were we looked at a little pond, we saw a bunch of newts in there, we saw a small Newt ball that means they're breeding here, right now. We witnessed that 95% of the year, you're not going to see that we happen to be here. I'm going to take note of that. And being a naturalist you are you're taking all that in to your overall life experience. It's adding to that and it makes you knowledgeable and it makes you more resolute and comfortable with being in the natural world where we should thrive. Right? Sometimes there's barriers there. Sometimes those barriers are known. Some times they're unknown, but being in the city, that's kind of a barrier to some people like that. Don't consider it nature. Some people see nature and cities go where you're comfortable, at least start that way. And then try to expose yourself to different ecosystems. And you're going to become more comfortable with nature, say, if you're just breaking in to where you know, I'm comfortable as deep as you can get into the Klamath mountains. Because I grew up here, I'm a biologist here, I'm very comfortable with being out there. And when I'm out there, I don't feel like I'm practicing something like I'm practicing being a naturalist. I'm just, I'm living, right. And I'm taking in what I'm seeing. And there's a point where you start feeling like you're part of this system, because you know a lot about it. And that is a wonderful feeling. Because you makes you comfortable with not knowing everything, because you know, you're never going to know it all. But you're going to know more every time you go. Every season you go in different weather, all those things are going to bring out different things

Michelle Fullner  50:55  
of that. And after all of this time spending your whole life as a naturalist in one way or another. What about entering spaces like this still takes your breath away,

Justin Garwood  51:06  
that it's still here, that every time you come here, you get different kinds of magic today is just as magical as it would be in the fall, it would be different. All the big leaf Maples would be electric color. But right now the moss is just vibrant, the steelhead are spawning right below us in the stream. Right now is the time for renewal. Right now is the time for the next generation. In the fall, you're coming in and seeing how that generation is doing. It's, you know, the progeny of these salmon. If you come in here and snorkel the stream in the summer, you'll see all the fry and par. So that's what's magical to me is always changing, and you'll never come back to this place where you're at, and it will be the same it will never be the same. And there's magic in that. I

Michelle Fullner  51:55  
think that's a perfect note to end on. Justin, thanks so much for sharing your experiences and taking the time to talk to me.

Justin Garwood  52:01  
Thanks for having me.

Michelle Fullner  52:02  
So take a moment each day to notice the world around you. And then maybe even take it a little further and learn the names of a few species you see frequently read up on those species and watch how they change throughout the year. Follow your own curiosity the way you would follow a stream to a river and a river to the ocean, see where it goes and what it can teach you. You may find some surprising insights some better questions to ask or a few interesting amphibians along the way. A big thank you to Justin for sharing his stories and knowledge so generously with all of us. If you want to see more of Justin's work firsthand check out the beautiful award winning book, the Klamath mountains natural history which Justin co edited into which he contributed a chapter. I also want to thank my friend Tori for helping me with the OED research and for reminding me that in the movie Zootopia the word naturalist is used to refer to nudists. I think the word Disney was looking for was naturist, not naturalist. But maybe some people are both and I'm not here to judge thank you to Cliff for filling me in on bird names and to stand for taking our kids to the zoo while I was recording this interview. Finally, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to leave a rating on Spotify or review on Apple podcasts. This helps people trust that hitting play is going to be a good use of their time, which helps the show grow, which helps more people get connected to the natural world. And if you want to see what my face looks like or find out about projects I'm working on like the holiday gift guide I just created or another exciting project I'm getting ready to announce soon make sure to follow me on Instagram at Golden State naturalist. If you listen to the end of the episode, I always tell you something interesting or mundane or embarrassing about my week and this week is that I'm trying out a new workflow where instead of sitting down and trying to do everything I need in one sitting, I just sit and work for 45 minutes and then I get up and move my body for five minutes. And this sounds like it would be less productive because I'm frequently stopping what I'm doing to walk around the block or do jumping jacks in my living room. But I'm actually much more focused and getting more done which is exciting. Okay, that's all for this episode. Thanks for listening and sharing and reviewing and all of the wonderful things you do. I can't wait to see you on the next episode of Golden State naturalist bye.

The song's called a no buy grapes and you can find a link to the song as well as the Creative Commons license in the show notes

Transcribed by https://otter.ai