I'm Blythe Wilde. I use she/her pronouns. I'm someone who's passionate about finding my connection with the land and exploring what that looks like. In terms of Colorado this summer, that looked like working for Jefferson County Open Space as a wildlife technician, in addition to my enjoyment of birding, hiking, and overall spending a great majority of my life outdoors. 

So we were doing something called spot mapping, which is basically where you're understanding the territories or different birds. I think part of what happened for me during that part, and sort of rippled out, was just an understanding of the complexity of a place. You think about the sort of massive amount of people living in subdivisions, because it's so visible, but birds live in that kind of way, too, in a way; they're so connected and interlaced in one area and overlapping. Just the scale: the scale at which these small places matter so much, especially since a lot of these species of birds are migrating up from South and Central America. They're arriving and they're hoping that there's a place to live for the summer and raise their family…just how big the impact is when the place they've been returning to for the last five years is suddenly gone? Or is suddenly not a place they can actually live. 

One species that needs a really specific habitat requirement is a Virginia's warbler. They really only like specific scrub oak, and I had one on one of my plots. It was literally a patch of oak, and there was one, and it was definitely a male. And he sang for so long; I don't really know if he found a mate; it was kind of unclear. So just the intimacy of that type of knowledge and the privilege of actually getting to do science. The complexity is joyful to me. 

I just really believe so much in science communication, and how important it is that everyone feels a part of the world that we live in, and to really think actively and critically about how to not have there be as many barriers, and define ways to support people feeling engaged and invested in the world around them. I think I always try to create environments where people can be really inquisitive. Because I feel like if we're searching and thinking, then it's a better world. 

Also, understanding relationship with place as a settler person, as someone who is not indigenous to North America, even though I live here. How do I be in relation with places–I am here because of violence of colonization and the continued violence of colonization. And what does that look like? Yet I don’t know another home or place. So really complicated and often pretty confusing. I guess that sort of building of interconnectedness. I think that's so much of what I believe in: how powerful and important relationships are of all kinds, and fostering and cultivating relationships. Because really valuing knowledge of everyone is so important to me, that's just become more of a philosophy of my life.