Be the Change
Rodrick Nash and personal transformation of EPI’s leaders
Who has inspired you? One of my environmental heroes, Dr. Rodrick Nash (http://www.es.ucsb.edu/faculty/nash.php), was in Montana last week. Rod was my senior thesis advisor back in my UC Santa Barbara days. He’s a historian and author who wrote what Outside Magazine dubbed one of the “10 books that changed the world.” He definitely changed my world, and the world of all of EPI’s students, whether or not they know it. Both Scott (EPI co-founder) and I took his intro to environmental studies class as undergrads, read his Wilderness and the American Mind – and decided that we wanted to make a difference for the environment.
The last time I saw Rod Nash was 15 year ago, at the Smithsonian in DC, where he convinced me in about 30 seconds to quit my job as an environmental scientist and immerse myself in nature as a river guide on the Colorado.
How does an individual create transformation in another? It’s something we strive for at EPI, and seeing Rod again was a reminder for me of what it takes. Rod:
- is someone I respect – he’s both smart and funny; how many of your professors got standing ovations after their lectures?
- has had many cool life experiences – he floats the Grand Canyon, skis big mountains, and sails in the Sea of Cortez when not holding office hours;
- has a vision of a better future – one in which the earth and humans achieve a balanced relationship.
In my experience with high school students on field science programs for the last decade, the fundamentals that changed my life from knowing Rod Nash have some universal application. These same elements are what we try to combine in an EPI course, and we hear from our students on a regular basis about how their lives are changed.
If you want to hear Dr. Nash yourself, listen to his interview on npr: http://www.wildernesswatch.org/.