Rooting for a Healthy Home by Mara

Rooting for a Healthy Home by Mara - November 2023 Scholarship Essay

Growing up in a wide valley with bold mountains rising out of meadows and lakes reflecting larch trees, I became intensely passionate about caring for the continuing health of our living world, the world that has sustained me my whole life. My dreams of better understanding our planet and learning how to help it thrive only become possible with science education. When in an environment where learning about life’s processes is of utmost importance, such as in school, wonderful ideas are bound to occur. Some may say life changing ideas: for both the student and all of the world. It shouldn’t be a dream to sustain this earth, but a necessary reciprocal act of living, of being a human.

I have wandered through this world with my eyes wide open in astonishment, in appreciation, and in gratitude. I started attending university right out of high school, paying on my own for what scholarships didn’t cover. I completed two years of classes, mostly in large lecture halls that skimmed the surface of broad topics. After a traumatic fall off a mountain while hiking, ending in a life-flight to the hospital, my concussion slowed my learning capacity. Being in such packed classrooms with little to no student-content-engagement did not flow well into my brain, especially while recovering from a distressing head injury. It became clear I needed a change, as school at that point seemed to be hindering, more than helping, me reach my dream of understanding how to care for the living earth. I took a few years to travel around for jobs, admiring the altering landscapes and their respective plant, animal, and fungal inhabitants, and learning about the world in a different way, out of the classroom. During my three year break from learning in a university setting, I worked jobs that took me back an ocean arm full of salmon, to glaciers with mountains sloping into the waters, an agricultural valley with foothills greeting me in yellow masses, alpine tundra dotted with tiny flowers and lichen below North America’s grandest peak, and eye-to-eye with countless other daily wonders of nature. I set off to learn about the oceans, sea lions, blueberries, woodpeckers, and willows by simply being with them. I’ll always take time just to be, but I’m reaching another path now: one that’s leading me back to education in a classroom.

In this time when we have reached far beyond the thresholds of healthy ecosystems, leading them to collapse, there is no viable option but to act now. Understanding the living world’s processes has always been an interest to me, and I’m glad to be returning to school to learn more about them to pursue my dream of caring for the earth, even though I’ll come up short on the payments. I wasn’t sure my money was worth it a few years ago, but now I know education is always worth it. I’m now in a position of knowing school is the next step to pursue my dream, despite the tuition hurdles. I’ve taken care to find a school with small classes and more hands-on learning, to ensure my passions have a clearer way to take root through the books and lessons given. I’m sure my connection in the classroom will be stronger now, carrying me through to sustaining the earth. Without the given generosity of this planet we’re both lucky enough to call home, I wouldn’t be here writing about my dreams, you wouldn’t be here considering them, and the leaves and pine needles of my inspirations wouldn’t be converting sunshine into oxygen for us to breathe and continue doing the things we love. We owe our lives to the earth. With the constant climate devastations becoming impossible to ignore, there is no other time than now to foster education, to go deeper into my quest for the betterment of the planet.

There is only so much that walking by myself through the green trees, the meadows of summer wildflowers, and the snowy mountain tops will teach me. My passions have been rectified from the beauty I’ve been able to live amongst, giving me a wide-eyed view of the desperate need our world is in for care and sustenance. A tremendous amount is learned by immersing oneself in these places, but other kinds of organized education are necessary to apply that knowledge towards helping the world, and all its inhabitants and wonders, to thrive through these unknowable times.