Received yesterday, gratefully, and shared with permission:
Hello Tristan Gooley,
I am not sure if this will reach you directly, but I am hoping it can get passed along.
Just yesterday, I finished reading your book The Secret World of Weather. This book has had a profound impact on me. I bought this book a little under a year ago and I started reading it about 4 months ago now. During this time, my life has changed drastically. If I may, I would love to share a bit about myself and the impact this book has had on me.
My name is DG and I live in ******, Wisconsin! I have always had a love of nature and a profound interest in it, but I have only truly discovered the depths of that interest recently. I attended university to study Elementary and Middle School General and Special Education.
I graduated college a little over a year ago with a teaching degree. Almost immediately after graduation, I was hit with the realization that I might not want to teach. Through the rest of the year, this conviction only got stronger. I didn’t apply to teaching jobs, got a job at a coffee shop, and spent the summer ruminating. By the end of the summer, I had discovered a job opening at a local nature center as an Environmental Educator. This would combine my love of nature with my teaching skills, along with a more informal teaching setting. I applied, got the job, and enjoyed it throughout the fall. By winter, I realized I wasn’t any closer to figuring out what I wanted to do. I had been enjoying my job, but my conviction hadn’t gone away about not wanting to teach. However, my love of and curiosity about the natural world had only grown stronger.
It was around January that I picked up your book. I was knee deep in rethinking my entire life, strengthening my relationship with the natural world at work, and desperate for an answer. Whether it was the catalyst or simply coincided with an extremely influential time in my life, your book was part of changing my life.
This book has made me so much more observant. I wake up every morning wondering what clouds I will see today, what the birds are up to, and what direction the wind is moving. During the really cold months, I observed a smoke stack (I think it was actually steam coming out? It is not as visible as it’s getting warmer…) right outside my house that told me where the wind was headed every morning! Everytime I put your book down, I felt like I had learned something new. Sometimes it would take me a day or two to process what I had read, but it was especially helpful that I could observe what I was reading in my daily life! I remember the first time I saw perching birds at slightly different heights, one on a telephone line and the other slightly lower on a tree branch, one was facing south and the other southwest!!!! It was EXHILARATING. There was the wind direction!! How much it can change from different altitudes!! Absolutely captivating!! As I read, my daily life changed. I was becoming increasingly in-tune with the natural world as I walked through it daily.
In February, I had a whirlwind of a week. One evening while talking with friends, I remembered being interested in a Geography and Environmental Science minor while I was in college. I had taken one class in each respective field as part of my general education requirement, and I absolutely fell in love with them. I had never felt so intrinsically interested in a subject. I ended up not doing a minor as it would have added time onto my degree, which I was devastated about. Years later during that conversation, it felt good to remember I had interests other than teaching, especially ones that I hadn’t fully investigated. The next day, I had a conversation with my boss about the recent federal funding cuts to environmental-related jobs from the current administration. My position is with Americorps, and we were vulnerable to these cuts and I had previously mentioned to my boss that I would be happy to do another year term here. On that day, she told me that if there was something else I was considering for the fall, I should go for it. The timing absolutely blew me away. I spent the rest of that day and the week following contemplating. Should I go back to school? My entire time at this job had shown me over and over again my passion for the natural world, and how happy I would be to get out of teaching. So, I went for it.
I am currently re-enrolled at university and starting this coming fall with a Geography: Humans and the Environment major. I am absolutely ecstatic. It has been terrifying making this decision, but at this moment I couldn’t feel more clear. I can’t wait to learn more about this beautiful earth we live on and how we interact with it.
Thank you if you’ve made it this far. I know this is long-winded, but it’s all to say: thank you, Tristan. As mentioned before, I don’t know if your book was the catalyst or if this was just some insane timing, but I truly feel like my life is different after reading your book. I feel grounded, I feel excited when I venture outside, and I am hungry for deeper knowledge about the natural world. I attribute your book fully to the fact that I can read the world better than I have ever been able to. I find meaning in the clouds, the birds, insects flying around, grass that is seemingly smushed, and every gust of wind I feel. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for writing this. It equips any average person with the ability to understand a little more about the world around them and enjoy noticing these little things that hide under most of our noses. The last paragraph was absolutely beautiful, it made me cry. I truly believe that cultivating curiosity and wonder in ourselves is the most important thing in this life, it is our driving force. So thank you, and I look forward to reading more of your works as I dive headfirst into this new field.
Sincerely,
DG
Thank you DG! Emails like yours make all the hard work more enjoyable.
