The Masked Naturalist

Hello!

During the early days of the pandemic, I had the idea of doing a project called "The Masked Naturalist". For a little background, I have worked as naturalist and environmental educator for the past five years, working primarily in Minnesota, but also spending a lot of time on the West Coast as well as the desert Southwest. I was laid off for the first six months of 2020, which meant a lot of down time, and a lot of time to go out and explore in nature. During this time I had the idea of starting a blog, a website, or something to document cool nature things I have found, noticed, or seen as I have more of an experts eye, spotting things that others may not notice when walking through the woods. I decided this would be a good idea because I often feel like outdoor education and environmental education are sometimes considered a luxury and I think all people have interest in nature, and especially in light of fake news, climate crises world wide, and many of us left wondering what will become of our wild spaces, I would start putting out cool information. I want to do this because I would like to help cultivate peoples love of nature, and to see the extremely cool side of the mundane, the things we take for granted, the things you might walk past and not notice if you were hiking through your neighborhood woods.

Throughout 2020, I visited wild spaces in our state parks, national parks, and wildlife areas. I eventually started working again with a local county, and this project fell to the background. Fast forward two years, and I started using my Instagram account to do just this, but I am not always the best at social media (although feel free to check me out, @themaskednaturalist on the gram) but I have been slowly improving with photography. But my real passion has always been for writing, telling stories, and finding new ways to express things. As an educator, working in an environment and project based school, I realized that telling people about the awesome and exciting natural world would be in line with who I am as a person and my values. But I was looking for a way to reach out to the greater area and hopefully have an impact.

Of course I have certain things that are my areas of expertise. I also have things that I get extremely excited about! Just for reference, I love talking about plants, reptiles, birds, fungi (mushrooms, lichen, and the works) and I really love talking about insects and arachnids. I want to help people understand these creatures, espeically those that people have often felt afraid or aprhensive of. I love to help out the animals that people call "creepy" or "gross". I think it is important for people to understand why things we don't necessarily like are still important to protect.

I found this platform this year, where I think I will be able to do just that. I am hoping that I will be able to write about the cool "neature" that I encounter through my adventures, and hopefully help to inspire the next generation (or previous generations) to gain a love for nature, conservation, and rehabilitation of the wild world around us. I hope you decide to join me on this journey, and I hope you submit questions and wonderings! I am always learning new things and I want to help others learn new thing as we discover new things!

Stay wild, stay curious, and stay adventurous!