The Passion of Nature -by Denise Culver
While camping as an 8-year-old, in the Wind River Range, Wyoming. I refused to leave, tying myself with a bungee cord to a trash can at our campsite. Even as a child I knew that being outside in the natural word was my happy place.
Fast forward to 1982. I was 23, miserable, working at a coal-fired power plant, no direction, no passion. That winter I went to Jackson, WY to visit a friend working seasonally for the National Park Service. We skied the inner park highway to a historical cabin, right at the base of the Grand Teton. The day was cold but sunny and clear. The cold air created an illusion that the Grand Teton Mountain appeared closer than it was. We heard the whoosh of a pair of wings as a raven flew above. I was stunned by the beauty around me.
That weekend I re-discovered my life passion. I knew then I had to find a way to work in Nature, especially the Rocky Mountains, where I have always been the happiest and most content.
The next fifteen years I worked with the National Park Service, then went back to school for a Master’s in Botany. What followed next was 20+ years with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program, at Colorado State University, conducting county surveys for rare plants. I’ve been privileged to see more wild places in Colorado then most everyone! One place in the San Juan Mountains is etched in my memory. I was the only human at a cirque lake, the pikas were scurrying about, and a pair of bighorn sheep scrambled down to the lake. I sat there with so much gratitude and awe. Another memory, also in southwestern Colorado, is of one of the most unique wetlands I have ever explored. The surrounding geology of iron rich minerals, create a peat-accumulating wetland, called a fen. Due to the high mineral content of the groundwater, terraces had formed, much like one sees in Yellowstone. I sat at the edge of the wetland, listening to the cascade of the water and smelling the coniferous forest.
I have had numerous opportunities to advise undergraduate students especially about next steps in their career. I would always tell them the story about rediscovering my passion in the Grand Tetons and would encourage them to find that place or thing that grounded them the most and to follow their passion. The rest will fall into place.
For me, the importance of being in nature, of learning from nature, has been my touch stone. Over the decades, I have returned to the same campground in the Wind River and to the Grand Tetons whenever I was floundering. These are the locations that bring me back to myself, to my understanding of what I cherish.
Denise Culver, recently retired, has been an ecologist/botanist with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program since 1995. She is the author of the Field Guide to Colorado’s Wetland Plants: Identification, Ecology and Conservation as well as three pocket field guides for common wetland plants.
