Light, Land, and Learning To Look

The first thing I noticed when I moved to California was the light, how it sharpens the edges of everything, from orchard rows to mountain silhouettes, to the redwoods. The landscape feels alive in a different register: drier, more exposed, constantly reminding you of what it gives and what it withholds. For someone who grew up in Appalachia, surrounded by a different terrain, California feels both foreign and familiar. It’s a place that asks for attention; and rewards it with depth.

Left: The Lost Coast, California | Right: West Viriginia

That same attentiveness is what drew me to creative work, to environmental work and eventually, to Wild Farm Alliance. Through my GrizzlyCorps fellowship, I’m beginning to learn how creativity can be a form of stewardship; a way of translating ecological ideas into something people can touch, see, and carry forward. Wild Farm Alliance works at the intersection of farming and biodiversity, supporting practices like bird-safe orchards, hedgerow restoration, and wildlife-friendly agriculture.

My role is to help communicate these connections through visual storytelling, building bridges between data, design, and the lived experience of working with the land. Creative work (I have a background in Photography and Visual Design), to me, is not just about

aesthetics. It’s about observation, noticing patterns, relationships, and meaning in the world around us. Whether I’m creating a habitat map or an outreach guide, I’m thinking about how visuals can invite people into conversation, not just present information. In a time when environmental work can feel abstract or overwhelming, design can make it personal again, it can help people see their place in the landscape.

Survey creative for a field day in the Central Valley

California has reshaped how I understand scale and fragility. The elements here; water, soil,

pollinators, and people are intertwined in ways that echo my memories of home yet stretch far beyond them. I’m looking forward to exploring farmerscapes, witnessing the use of cover crops native plant implementation, conservationists restoring riparian corridors, and communities finding creative ways to adapt to climate change. The work is iterative, collaborative, and process oriented like the design practice itself.

Hedgerow Plantings

As I step into this fellowship year, I’m looking forward to learning from those who live these relationships daily. I hope to contribute by creating visual stories that reflect not just the science of restoration, but its emotion; the care, patience, and imagination it takes to sustain life in all its forms. Through GrizzlyCorps, I’m excited to explore how art and ecology can meet in the middle, shaping a future rooted in attention, reciprocity, and renewal.