Alexandria Louise Wilson Kahalley–also Alex. I think most of my memories with nature come from playing soccer. What grounded me the most then was actually hitting the ground, because I was a goalkeeper. From a very young age, I was touching the grass and ground all the time. I would dive to save a ball and there'd be a ladybug sitting there. But the position itself allowed me to be a lot more in touch with nature than I thought. Soccer in general is played outside, right, a beautiful game. 

And I brought up the hail earlier because when we won State, we had a lot of momentum from Ellie and everything that happened in high school. Immediately after we won, we celebrated for five minutes, and then the sky just parted, and hail just erupted down. Nature is really in tune with what is going on in the universe right now. A lot of us like to believe that the hail was from Ellie. So that fall of 2012, Ellie was a player on our soccer team, and she passed away. And you're 16 and you just don't even expect to feel some sort of shock like that, and immense sadness and confusion and death is a real thing. So when we got to the Championship, and it was pouring rain, not ideal, I can vividly remember the whistle blowing, I'm drenched, soaking wet. We all run over it, we hug. All of a sudden, we look up–it could have been in a movie–and it was just sheets of hail. The sky parted. I think two people looked at me and we were like, that was Ellie. 

I also feel like my personal connection with nature…Okay, this is gonna be funny. The Marines use this phrase, “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” Trees grow very slow, right? But then you can turn around maybe like a year later and it's shot up. There's just that idea that growth in your life can be so slow, but it can be massive. 

Yeah, I think that's the deeper connection I have with it, that really probably drives my life is the symbolism that comes from it: smallness. Nature can make you feel small in a good way. And very appreciative. There are these big giant, massive things, trees, mountains, lakes, oceans, and when you look at them, you just feel like, “That's not the mountain I have to climb today. My problems are nowhere near that big.”