About Katie

Researcher – Earth Advocate – Writer – Explorer – Poet

What would it take to become a society of environmental stewards, of ecologically and socially conscious, collaborative human beings?

The biggest shift in my awareness happened in the years I spent living in the desert, when my life was in direct contact with nature. I slept outside every night under the stars, no tent, under one of the darkest and clearest night skies in the world. I woke up every day with the sunrise over the Niger River. I learned how to make thatch huts with my neighbors. I grew herbs and veggies in my garden to suppliment my diet and with my neighbors, I learned how to read footprints in the sand. I became attuned to subtle changes in nature. I had no internet access; so no social media to whittle away the time. In the heat of the day, I spent most of my afternoons sitting under my grass awning, listening to the birds and the kids playing in the river, with the sweet smell of mint wafting over from the garden and literally pondering existence. How can this one earth have so many different ways of being?

I like to ask questions. Maybe it is both a blessing and a curse, to always be seeking, wondering, curious, to never be content with unexamined ideas. I am not afraid to sit with a question, or suspend in deliberation multiple questions at once. Sometimes, if not most of the time, questions do not have immediate answers, but sitting with them opens up the opportunity to explore deeper, to come to new understandings, to seek out connections to make a better ‘answer’ to the question that was not first apparent. After all, we are all in the process of becoming…