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Finding Faith in Nature | Stephanie Jones, Naturalist · Follow the Leighder

• Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, howdy folks and welcome back to another episode of Follow the Leader. I'm your host, Leigh Larson, and joining me from Bay Area, California. Ooh, this is gonna be a fun one, y'all. Stephanie Jones, welcome. Stephanie: Thank you for having me. It's good to see you. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely, it is great to see you. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to come and talk to us about being a naturalist, being a spiritualist, being a Bible study leader, being a coalition builder. Y'all check out this bio. Not only is she a certified California naturalist and a Bible study leader as mentioned, but she describes herself as a work in progress at walking slower to notice the world. Her job is project coordination. Her interests involve carrying 30 pounds of stuff through the wilderness for days. And she once used a spoon to unlock her car. Wow. Stephanie, that's a heck of a description. Talk to us about your walk with faith and your walk with nature, how that leads you to carrying 30 pounds of stuff in the wilderness and unlocking spoons and cars. Stephanie: you Leigh/@followtheleighder: Was this something that was always a part of you or something that kind of came later in life? Stephanie: Yeah, that's a good question. And I don't know that I've ever fully connected the through line of how I grew up to where I'm at with nature today. I grew up in the Northwoods of Minnesota, so lots of pine trees, lots of lakes. That was just like being in nature was a part of everyday life. And I also grew up in a family where faith was very important and built into our family culture. Now, my relationship to both of those things has gone through many twists and turns through life, through living overseas, going to college, gaining life experiences. I would say that I was not great at noticing nature until like late post-college into like being an adult. Even if it was a part of like, I think it was just, this is gonna sound like an excuse, too much a part of like just my normal background noise to like fully appreciate it. But yeah, I grew up in a place that I loved and was beautiful and enjoyed being outside. When we moved, when my husband and I moved to California to the Bay Area. I always thought, given my love for water, that I would become an ocean Californian. And I do love the ocean. And the first year we lived here, I made sure like every month we went to go see the ocean. But I don't, I've become such a mountain Californian because I don't love driving through all the people to get to the ocean. And it's a little bit longer, but way easier to get up to the mountains and to the lakes up there. So through that exploration and just exploring this beautiful place that we moved to, I just came home one day and I said, hey, how do you feel about trying backpacking for the first time? And so like our first backpacking trip was six days out. So we're just gonna jump in to that. And that was a beautiful experience. of just like there is something, and this is going to sound maybe elitist, but like there is something beautiful about seeing a place that you can only get to by walking there. And like just how you experience and interact with the environment. But I would say that being a naturalist is almost antithetical to being a hiker or a backpacker. It depends on how you go out, but Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Stephanie: I learned the slow pace of naturalist isn't always the same as like I'm a backpacker who needs to get 30 miles up trail. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Right. And and that is true. The naturalist is letting things unfold as it goes. But you've got safety. You've got a gen like and it's not like just a goal. You want to go see the top or whatever. Like you might have daylight. You've got weather. You've got like there's other animal like there's real things. And and so it is interesting. You're talking about that specific part of it because there is the go out and enjoy the wildflowers and just sit by the river and journal. Stephanie: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: or, you know, stroll in the forest kind of thing that you're talking about. And then there is the like, we've got to go and like... Stephanie: Yeah. Well, yeah, and when you're carrying like food for so many days and the only the only way to get more food is to get out. You got to you got to walk. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Yep. You got to walk. No, and it'll it'll it'll push you. I've done just Yeah, talk to me about where you've done some of these these backpacking trips. And is it you and you're going out with groups? And is it just you and your partner? Like, what does that look like? Stephanie: Yeah, it's been different groups over the years. my partner and I do a lot of backpacking. It's usually led by, like I'm the one that initiates the like planning of it. So we've done the Lost Coast, excuse me. We've done Sequoia National Park. We've done hike backpacking trips in Yosemite. I also, I led a a Girl Scout troop on their first backpacking trip, which was really so fun. And that was just in a local, like, regional park here. I had done the research on where to go. And it was so fun to, like, help them prepare for it and answer any questions they had, like, talking with a group of women in the wilderness of, like, how do you deal with, like, menstruation when you're out for a month? And, yeah, it was just... Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie: So I've done that and then I've also like a couple summers ago I did my first solo trip because I just no one else had time and I wanted to do it so I did it. It was, yep. It was just a section, section in the Sierra. Leigh/@followtheleighder: that's awesome. Was that also in California? that is so That's really, that's so special. That's so special and empowering too. When you're out there, I know we've kind of talked about this faith back and forth, but how has some of these like endurance or larger trips, how has that, how have you seen God or how has like you, how has that worked with you? So I know that I'm bumbling over this question a bit, but. Stephanie: Yeah, yeah, no. Leigh/@followtheleighder: But really, mean, some of these, you talk about walking and it is beautiful to get where you're going, but it's also hard. And there are low days and low times and how have you seen nature and God show up? Stephanie: Yeah, there was on our first backpacking trip, I was listening to an audio book every day. I mean, I was listening to many things and singing out loud and doing whatever you can to distract yourself. But I was listening to a book from a woman who has a Christian background and it was the book was called What Sounds Fun? That sounds fun. That sounds fun, I think is what it was called. But it was all about like finding joy in being an amateur and like, and, and, and she connected it to a lot of like the Eden narrative. so it felt very, applicable to the situation that I was in, but there was something on the, on day three, when you're climbing so many granite staircases and just like elevation and elevation and elevation, and it's hot and you've got 30 pounds on your back and it's hard. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Stephanie: to be like there is joy in like this is what you get to do or what you've chosen to do and it doesn't have to mean something like bigger i'm not doing it for content but just like reconnected so that was a really hard like emotional day for me on that particular trip and just to be reminded like that i get to do this that god i was listening to through the psalms also on that trip and just connecting like there are low points and it's okay when there's low points that God is still present. And to look around at the nature and creation to see like where he's given care to places. The other time that like I, and this is kind of like what kicked off my idea of like what can we learn about God from nature is there was one time we were going to Joshua Tree National Park and which is about an eight to 10 hour drive from here. And on our drive down, well, suffice to say it was it was kind of a wreck of a trip. There was a lot of wind and in the Nash in Joshua tree in the campgrounds, you can't tie your your tent to Joshua trees. So it's like sand or rocks. There was a lot of wind. It was a very hard trip. And in the middle of that, we were Leigh/@followtheleighder: You Stephanie: I was reading an interpretive sign and it was talking about how Joshua trees grow branchless and they don't get another branch or even have a flower until it goes through this like cold hard frost. Like it basically kills some of the cells that creates that new growth. And I was like, doesn't God do that sometimes where like out of Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Stephanie: out of hard seasons, there is an opportunity for new growth. And I'm not, I would never tell someone in a hard season, like, just so you know, like there's a chance to flower from that. Like that's not, that's not what I'm about. But I think like in for one's own self to think through, like there's something really beautiful about the Joshua tree and how God has created this process of flowering through Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right, right, right. Hmm. Stephanie: cold hard seasons. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I want to I want to echo that back. Two different stories in the same vein, though. I spent last summer, two months in Pakistan working. It was a humanitarian girls education, women's work. But it is very, very hot and dry country. But they do have some of the sweetest fruits. I've ever the mangoes were the best I've ever had in my life and like it is a hot hard country economically socially they got all there a lot of things going on over there, but But it was just like it was like spiritual to sit there on the stoop I sit there on the stairs with a Pakistani friend and they eat a good peach and just play just friendship and good fruit like or just you know and and Stephanie: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And also back in the United States, Colorado, that cold snap you're talking about really impacts Palisade peaches. And it's what, and I thought that was cool. That was a cool story. was like the cold literally impacts Palisade peaches compared to like Georgia peaches or you know, these other. Stephanie: Yeah. Right, yeah, you get a very, it's a very different thing. And I like that for the peaches in particular that like, it's not one climate, it's, you get different things. mean, it's true for like Michigan cherries versus like Rainier cherries are very different. And I like that. Leigh/@followtheleighder: No, people are like, yes, the listeners are like, yes, guys, different fruits in different places are, that's not what we're trying to say. It's about the story. It's about the story. But. Stephanie: Yeah, they're like, yeah, there's a difference. Groundbreaking. Yeah. Yeah, and I think there's a lot of things like that in nature. know, there's like pine cones. We think pine cones, open one every one to two years and release their seeds, but there's some tree species. where the pine cone or the conifer cones stay closed until a wildfire comes through and that could be 50 years in an area before the wildfire and the heat of it comes and opens those seeds for dispersal and they find growth in the nutrient ash from that wildfire. Leigh/@followtheleighder: That is so cool. where you're nerding out about stories. That's like beavers. Beavers, like I am like unsung heroes. I'm out here flying banners. Like, do you guys know how critical beavers are to ecosystems? Stephanie: I'm here. Yeah, and there's all the wildfires that are happening in northern Minnesota right now. And Emily Fairfax was like, here's like a beaver refugia. like they have a tracking of a wolf that is like between fires just like camped down in the beaver refugia because it's the wetlands and that's where they can stay safe between fires. It's like real time data of like a really cool story. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yep. Whoa. That is a really cool story. See more good news, like just more good nature. I mean, we don't like the big wildfires that relates to climate change, but like that is cool. But so that is actually a good where I wanted to return back to a little bit about a storytelling. But you've done project coordination and obviously we've been talking about naturalism and storytelling. How how did you know that you wanted to get certified? as a certified naturalist and how does storytelling, I mean, I know we've touched on this obviously, but what really drove you to that decision? Stephanie: Yeah. So my background like from college is marketing and communications. So I already have a little bit of, and I was an English teacher to Turkish students in Ankara, Turkey for a couple of years, which really leaned on the communications and learning about your audience and how do you present something and teach something to them. So that's always been a part of the work that I've done. And when I started noticing in nature things that we can learn about God, I one wanted to learn more about nature and two, I want to tell that story and connect people to it. so become a certified naturalist. Connecting people to science and nature is like mainly what it's about. It's not necessarily about like the correct identification of every single living thing that you see out your front door, but it's how do you connect people to that. And so I thought that would be a really one, I'm a lifelong learner. like anytime you can put me into a place that I can get a certification for learning, I'm down. But yeah, it was just, I wanted to be able to do justice to the connections that I was starting to see between Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yes. Stephanie: between creation and God and connect to people in ways that like not what I think but like how can I help you where you're at notice that and help that so I thought that's that's really where like becoming a certified naturalist came about and I was very excited because it worked out to take in California There's a lot of nonprofits that run certified naturalist certification courses. And it just happened to be that the nonprofit that I chose to go through was one I was familiar with, had a history of coalition building, and worked with my work schedule. So it just felt like the right time to go get that certification from that organization in particular. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And since then, has that certification allowed you to do what projects or opportunities have you seen with it? Stephanie: Yeah, so I only became certified in March. So it's only been a short amount of time. I've worked with that nonprofit, TulioMe, on their event planning and coordination for a gala or like a, yeah, like a gala that they host. I was already a volunteer in my local state park. And I've just noticed that the way that I can engage with public has changed and like, Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Stephanie: how I can encourage the public to engage with the nature that they're about to go out and witness has changed. But I'm still looking for like, yeah, opportunities. Like it's informed the writing in the book and the manuscript that I'm working on. But as far as like public facing opportunities, still looking for ways. There's a lot in California. and the natural world and ways to connect. So I'm just looking for what's the best use of my resources. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, I also asked that because I recently got certified through the National Association of Interpreters. But I wanted to do it because my background is in teaching and ministry, but there was a lot of either pulpit or a slideshow behind me and people sitting and writing. that's a different style of public speaking that when I wanted to go out in the community, I was like, there's got to be better ways. And then I've been to enough campground. talks when I go camping at national parks or state park, you know, any of those that have been like, you guys are so animated. How do you all do that? And, it's because they don't have the slideshow. They're not expecting the audience to write it down. It's, it's a campground. It's a national, you know, park rangers. And, and I was like, this is a whole gift of being able to communicate nature. So, and it's a lot of people who just want the highlights. Like, like give me Stephanie: Yeah, yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: five cool facts, but like in an animated way that I can, and just, and it's storytelling about nature in ways that hit home. And so again, when I came across your stuff, I was like, yeah, she's out here doing it. Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, so like in the course or the certification that you did, what is one thing that you learned about? Like, because for me, the thing that surprised me in becoming a naturalist in California in particular was I got real excited about a specific kind of dirt. And it's funny because I think animation, like you were saying, is a part of what connects people. And like, I was surprised at how quickly I was like, this dirt is so pool, the soil, and it's based on like the state rock of California and where it came from. And so like, what did you learn through your interpretive certification? Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yes. Well, the interpretive certification was more like how to teach or like how it was like a public skeet. So it was not necessarily that though. I will say my thing if everyone's got a thing like is like feathers and bones, like I have feathers and bones around my house a lot. And I'm trying to think if I have any doubt. I have rocks and sea shells and stuff like that, but really into bones that I bleach and whatnot. But One of the things that really stood out for me was movement, like movement around the space. And again, coming from the podium or coming into the pulpit of academia or ministry, and then you don't get that. It's a different style of speaking. So like moving around the stage, which was kind of like, no, my podium, my notes. And it was like, you don't get notes anymore. It's like, now you're just telling stories around a campfire. And that's cool. Stephanie: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: But in an animated way, again, it's not sitting there. And you've got to tell it to... And that was just cool. Movement breaking away from the script or the island. My shield, like, no, it's between me and the people. And I'm like, no. And it helped. In the past two times that I've given a public speech, I've actually gone into the people and it does change. Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: it changes the whole dynamic of the public speaking event. And again, that is, that's natural. Like that standing up at a pulpit or podium, that's a very like cold intellectual way to do things. Going in and moving and like, storytelling is as old as time. And we just forget that because we get so in our heads. So, so yeah. Stephanie: Yeah, yeah. And so there's part of it of like, wanna be a better storyteller, because I think this is really neat, and I would like you to also think that this is really neat. But then also like, how do you, what are the, I don't wanna say mechanisms, because it's not as transactional as that, but like, what are the hooks that like, are gonna help connect people? So like the manuscript I'm working on. When I tell people I want to write a book about like what we learn about trees, what we learn about God from trees, they're like, like the trees in the Bible. And I was like, no, like the trees in your backyard, the ones that you can go out and touch and feel and like interact with because that makes it real in a way that like, I, and there's plenty of cool trees in the Bible to talk about. And they've been talked about. But I want to like, I want you to look in your backyard and be like, that oak tree has this specific thing and that reminds me of God or creation or whatever. You said bones and and just on the naturalist thing, one of the activities we did in class was to look at a skull of a coyote and we had to figure out how they died. And it was fascinating just to because it was again like the moving slow and asking nature what story are you telling here? Was really fascinating and I yeah, I just really appreciated that that that. Leigh/@followtheleighder: They, yeah. Mmm. Yeah. Stephanie: certification course. Leigh/@followtheleighder: There's a book, I don't see it, but I have it around here somewhere. It's called The Lost Art of Reading Nature Signs. And that's a cool book. Hey, audience, go buy that book at a local bookstore. Stephanie: Yeah. Yes. Leigh/@followtheleighder: But it was really profound because it does get deep for sure, but it is like if you want to read the first few pages of each chapter, it does get really cool. Just being able to find your way, just like things about the sun, the shapes of mountains, trees, like you can learn quite a bit. I mean, one thing I learned was trees. if you're, you know, if it's a still day, like no wind or something, and you can look at the trees and you can see which way the wind typically blows because it's gonna be shorter on one side and longer on the other. And the shorter side's gonna be the one that's been resistant, like facing the wind. And I was like, so like, you can figure out if it's still now where it's, and just like things like that, and I know some people, some of my listeners are not as outdoorsy as, know, backpacker like yourself and they're like, why do need to know which way the wind but it's, but you can practice this if you are living in an urban environment, you don't have the sort of resources and access to live in Montana or go backpacking in the Sierras. There's really cool ways even to introduce this stuff to you to your children or you know, other people in your lives that we are we can read stories from nature. Stephanie: Yeah, and I, like my goddaughter that lives in St. Louis the other week, I got a video call from them and they had gone out on a, they went out on a nature walk and they came back and they had a nature journal, which is funny because I was like, I don't think I was the one that told you about nature journaling. And they put in their nature journal what they found and it just said stick, leaf. And I was like, That's awesome. you, like me, when I'm putting things in my journal, it's like, what kind of tree did this leaf come from? But like, I want you to interact with nature at your level and your level is stick and leaf. And I love that. So yeah, like it's not about, and this is always like, I don't have a botany background. I just think trees are really cool. And like, what do you think? Like I go around asking everyone and I'm going to ask you. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie: What's your favorite tree? And so many times I've asked probably hundreds of people at this point what their favorite tree is and some people have an answer right away and some people say I don't think I have a favorite tree and within five seconds they have an answer. So I was like you do you just didn't know it. So Lee what's your favorite tree? Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yes. I split, so it was weird how my brain split because each of the trees meant something. And it went pecan tree because I'm from Texas, baobab because I spent time in Botswana, and then aspen because I, like they, and then aspen's from like Colorado, Montana, but all three of those places, it means something significant to me. And I remember looking at the trees and being like, this is a cool thing that specifically. Stephanie: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I mean, yes, you can find pecan and aspen, you know what I mean? But like, it was just very specific to the region in that moment. Aspens are cool with their underground root system. That is so cool. Stephanie: Yeah. They're so cool. Okay, so the camping trip that I went on on my own where I had to unlock my car with a spoon was in Utah because I specifically was going to Pando, which is the heaviest organism on earth, the 110 acres of technically one tree. And it's just. thousands of aspen, aspen, I don't know, what do you call them when it's like they're trees but it's one tree. But that's, yeah. All of the, all of the trunks. And it was because I wanted to go see that aspen tree because I was like it's just so cool how it is clonal. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. It's like, it's a re- I don't- Yes, yes. And fun fact, this is gonna out me. It's very Taylor Swiftian. But when I was camping in Colorado, I wrote a murder ballad about aspen trees because they're the knots on the trunks look like eyes. And so I would the murder ballad was like talking about how my only witness was those aspen eyes, you know, I buried a body in the aspen woods. Stephanie: Okay, okay, okay. I don't care about this podcast anymore. I need you to release that. That's what needs to come from this. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, but it just like, again, storytelling, was like, those trees look like eyeballs and spooking me out. And I was like, and I'm like, just hanging out. But what if I was really guilty of something? like, and I was like, like murder. Like murder. And I was like, this man cheated on me with the secretary. Now he's getting buried in the woods in the Aspens. Stephanie: Yeah. you like murder. Nobody but me and the Aspens know. Leigh/@followtheleighder: So anyway, sorry audience, we took a hard turn there. they, I want, cause that is the next question, hilariously enough, is what can we learn about the church and God from the trees? Stephanie: No. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Not murder ballads. Stephanie: So not murder ballots, probably some other good uplifting ballots. Yeah, and this kind of dovetails for me with coalition building. So I chose the naturalist certification course with that nonprofit that I knew had a history of coalition building. And I think particularly in our very fractured both church and political landscape, coalition building is becoming a diminishing skill. And I liked with that nonprofit that they created a national monument here in California and they did it through coalition building. And I first heard about it in the book, Enduring Wild by Josh Jackson. He spends years going to different Bureau of Land Management land through California and telling stories of like, underrepresented land basically. And this national monument and this organization was a part of it. And they talk in in his interviews about how they brought together a coalition of people who don't normally work together. Like back parkers aren't always in line with like the hunters or the people that are out on their ATVs in different places, but they worked very intentionally to bring together that. coalition. So I thought that was really neat and I wanted to learn about storytelling from someone who can do that well. And the reason that like for me or where I see coalition building in the body of Christ is again from trees like did you know, do you know about the mycorrhizal network? It's this underground like mushroom or like fungus interconnected web. in a forest and the older the forest, the thicker and denser and better connected it is. But what was fascinating to me about that when I was reading about it for the first time is trees share resources back and forth, but it's not just like a Douglas fir to a Douglas fir, like Douglas firs and birches, if they're in the same forest, will share carbon back and forth. depending on which part of the year it is and who has more carbon to share. And I was like, isn't that what we're supposed to be like in the church of like we are giving we have been blessed with resources and we can share it with others and it does not always have to be like the the the other people who look and think and worship exactly the way that we do but like I think to be reflective of that is is reflected in nature in that like the paper birches send carbon over to the Douglas fir. And then, you know, in the autumn that Douglas fir is like, Hey, we've been photosynthesizing for a lot longer. So here's some resources back. And Paul writes about that in first Corinthians. He writes about an ax or not ax in Romans. He talks about, know, we all have, we've all been given gifts and we're all meant to function and use those for the common good. And, and yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: That is so beautiful. That was a sermon. Thank you. And that's all. But I mean, first of all, I want to talk more about fungi in a second. That's really cool. But yes, in this interconnected web, this old, like, and really like the good and the bad. I had a conversation with someone today how hard it is, because we were talking more Stephanie: Let me, period. And done. Yeah, bye guys. Leigh/@followtheleighder: not nature, but like geopolitical war, colonialism, just like racism, sexism. were talking about other things and I was just like, it's, we were describing how it's all, where people are just so interconnected in our histories, like so deeply that like, even when someone would ask me like, how is Pakistan? like, aren't they in conflict with something? Or like, what's going on? How do you even start to talk about thousands of years of history and like, why? people do and do not get along and that's like also like so much with nature like it seems almost like so interconnected that you can't I mean you can't you're not it without anything else because it's all part of it and so absolutely beautiful absolutely beautiful you said that but go ahead Stephanie: Yeah, there's, I was gonna say there's, like it's interconnected. And I think one of the things, there's a lot to be said for like, you were saying like, kind of on the colonial path of like, we talk about wilderness, meaning a place where people aren't. And it's like people have been in the wilderness, in the wilderness, in these wild spaces a lot longer than we talk about. It's just we want it to be without other people. We want it for ourselves. So this idea of, and one of the reasons that like my perspective shifted was just I was doing a nature writing course and it was Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Stephanie: Or even in my photography, in nature photography, of not removing the people from it. So if I'm at Yosemite and I'm taking a picture of like a very iconic view, I want the people in it because the people are there and the people have always been there. And I think like the further we get from being connected or recognizing that we've always been connected to nature, nature is not a thing that we go out and do. It's in our backyards. That's like where, that's what I want is people to connect to. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Stephanie: You are a part of nature. You are nature. So let's protect it. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. That's beautiful. You brought up a book, I think, can you share with some of us because I've gone through your substack and folks, I really hope you'll you'll explore this later. But you sometimes do book reviews or in this particular one you do, you've talked about enduring wild, can you share with us some some texts or some perspectives, people that have influenced you along this naturalist journey? Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking at my shelf because I've kept all of the books that I've read from that. Hands down the one that I like I've read a lot of them. And so writing wild is kind of an anthology, but it's like really just introducing you to different people along the way different women who've been writing about nature. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Stephanie: It starts with Dorothy Wordsworth, who is the sister to William Wordsworth, who is a romantic poet in the Lake District in England. Very famous man. Dorothy, like, clearly through her diary has helped him shape some of his... So anyway. So Dorothy Wordsworth, her... It's just reading her journal and sometimes it gets real weird. I don't remember if I posted the one about Dorothy yet. I think it's on my sub stack. Because you can see how she influenced her very famous brother's poetry without any credit. But the one that I, so I was reading through all these different women and I wouldn't just read about their lives, I would go find their work and spend time reading the work before I moved on to the next one. And the one, two in particular connected with me personally. One because the first one was Mary, Hunter Austin, because she wrote about the past that we crossed when we did our first backpacking trip. So she was explaining this lake, this green lake in this bowl. And I was like, I have a picture of that lake. And the thing that I loved about Mary Hunter Austin's work was she's writing in the desert, which coming from Northwoods, Minnesota was not something I ever thought had life or was beautiful. And seeing the desert through her eyes and how abundant life is there was very meaningful to see the beauty in the desert and now I love it. And then the other one was The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. She spent most of her life in Cairngorms in Scotland, north of Edinburgh. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie: And one, it felt the most similar to like, like, it just felt like a fellow like soul like I if we had been like, if our souls would have connected if we had been if we'd been able so it just felt like writing that was could have not could have come for me because she had a whole life and experience that I don't want to discount but it felt the most similar to like, how I feel. So much so that Leigh/@followtheleighder: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie: when like for my birthday last year we planned a Scotland trip and I specifically like we went up to the Cairngorms because I wanted to connect to the place that Nan Shepherd had like loved so well. So the the living mountain was a really beautiful piece of Have you? Leigh/@followtheleighder: I have been to the Cairngorns. Yes, I was there two years ago and I enjoyed it. It was beautiful. I did a nice hike. You know, that fog. had some, they... I want to say they have reindeer or caribou in the National Park. And it's like one of the few places, like I think all of, you know, the United Kingdom that there's reindeer or something like that. Stephanie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they still have their ranger there. They have, we parked like right next to where they kind of like, you can go in and pet them and they had really high fences, you couldn't see them without paying. But they also wander. It's also one of the places that like the ancient Caledonian forest still has some old growth. Because a lot of, a lot of the highlands actually used to be forest and a lot of it got cut. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Mm. Stephanie: So the ancient, like the Scotts pine up there, we went looking for some old growth Scotts pine. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, that's fantastic. Stephanie: My husband knows that basically every trip we take now has something to do with trees at some point. Leigh/@followtheleighder: That is so cool. Well, and folks, this is like it's so critical. Grasses and trees like and trees do get a lot of love. They do. They're big. They provide a lot. They provide a lot. Grasses really get overlooked. And I have to plug grasses while we're here just because we've got grasslands out in eastern Montana. I'm sure you know this or me. I don't. But this whole area of the Dakotas, eastern Montana, Nebraska, that whole chunk of grasslands, folks. is actually critical and is one of the top three in the world in terms of how necessary it is and its ecosystem and how deep those roots go and what happens if the topsoil gets messed up. I think there's one in Asia and it's like a, I can't remember what the name of it is, but it's another grasslands that is so large and so deep. Yes, that's what you're yeah. Stephanie: Yeah, like the Asian step is, yeah. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And then there's a third and I don't know where the third, I don't know, but I just, I did not know that the American prairie, and that's what I learned while moving up to Montana, this American prairie, this whole chunk out here, it's like if you were to develop it, like you would have caused like catastrophic consequences to. And it would start with a dust bowl, and then it would turn into a wildfire. It's like big cat rolling effects. Stephanie: Well, that's like here in California, a lot of what people see, especially in this time in the dry season, are these like golden hills. The golden hills of California is a lot of invasive grasses. And that's part of the reason that they're much more flammable because they're not meant to be here in this environment. And if the native grasses were allowed to come back, Leigh/@followtheleighder: Hmm. Stephanie: You get much more because when you have that thick root system Water is retained in the land so much more than with these native grasses that are easy to pull out and don't have a lot of roots and don't trap the water and Yeah, but I don't I'm not great at identifying grasses yet. So that is one of the things That is one of the things that I like is on my list of things to learn Leigh/@followtheleighder: that's okay. No. Now, I appreciate that. And also to your point about sometimes in your nature journals, it can just be stick and leaf. It can just be grass. It can just be flower. And that's fine. I think the God part of it is us noticing, not necessarily us defining and researching. And that's cool. Those are things that he gives us. But sometimes it just is the noticing. Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: So. Stephanie: Yeah, and it and that's like, of all of the things that I take out of my naturalist class, and I learned a lot of really neat things. But like, I always say like, what I learned was to walk at the pace of a naturalist, which is slow. So that you notice. And even like, even in my day to day, I've got a friend who's a poet, his name is Tanner. And I have a sticker from one of his poems that just says walk a little slower. and I have it like stuck to the side of my like car. I'm not blocking any like significant. I know what my gas tank says. I know what my speed speedometer says, but like to the side of the my speedometer, I just have this little reminder of, you know, I, you don't always know what people are dealing with. And so like, if I'm rushing to someplace or I get annoyed because someone walks, cuts me off in traffic, like I don't know what they're doing so I just need to like my reminder is to walk a little bit slower thank god for the day and that I have whatever gift of wherever I'm going to is Leigh/@followtheleighder: That is so beautiful. I'm curious, looking ahead, what is next for you or what are some of the things that are really driving you today and how can we move forward? Stephanie: Yeah, one of the things, the current series that I've got going on my sub-stock is, I think it's, I should know what I called it, Small Talk is Killing the Church. And it's this idea of, like to me, all of these things are connected. Nature and God and storytelling and coalition building and. Like how we become better is by these connections and one of the things that has frustrated me over the years I've gotten a lot of comments on my body as a woman in the church as a pastor's wife in the church I am highly visible in ways that not everyone is And for a long time and I put this in in one of those posts people would come to me and say, when are you due? And I was like, you're not even gonna ask like if, you just, you look at my body and you know, so that's how you're gonna start the conversation. And that was one hurtful for a long time, but also like, in trying to think of other people's experiences with it is how do we, come without assumption to relationship, to coalition building, to whatever. So it's being curious about the other person without assumption. And actually you had a, one of your guests recently, I wrote Chaplain Jared Anderson. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Stephanie: He had a really good thing about like, you don't know from someone's dog tags what they actually believe. You just know like kind of the flavor of what it was. And I thought that like that was directly in line with what I'm about, which is like being curious about them and asking and allowing them to tell their story. So that's my thing. My thing is like, how can we be curious, not just about nature, but about each other? Sorry, there's a hummingbird that's like aggressively looking in my window right now. It was very delightful. How can we be curious about nature? How can we be curious about each other so that we are building a better coalition? And not that it's that we're all 100 % on board or the same or anything. But I think knowing each other well involves setting aside assumptions. Leigh/@followtheleighder: That's so beautiful. Stephanie: Just examining ourselves like one of my highlights on my Instagram is just asking better questions and whenever people have good questions I posted on there and today one was from Kate Bowler who was instead of having a gratitude journal. Here's ten questions to ask yourself And I found that fascinating because I'm always like how do you ask other people better questions? But yeah, how do you ask better questions of yourself to get to know who you are to get to know God? Yeah Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm. That's so beautiful. You are on a roll, Stephanie. I'm so excited. You are sharing your voice with the internet, with the world, with all your knowledge. And it seems to be integrating and alchemizing and really coming together. And I just continue to look forward to being in relationship with you online. And then hopefully we can connect in real person for some content or something together. Stephanie: Yeah. Great. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Can you tell folks how they can learn more about your mind and your message? Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely. I am most active on Instagram and Substack. My Instagram is, I mean, it's slowly too, but it's S-L-O-L-E-E, the number two, on Instagram. And then I actually, I know what my Substack is called, but I don't have the URL off the top of my head. Oh. It's the same thing, it's slowly, S-L-O-L-E-E, no two, just slowly. And that sub stack is really, it's called recreation, recreation recreation, which is just a different way to say the same word, because I think we are recreated through recreation in creation. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Beautiful. Wow. I so appreciate you coming on the episode today. This has been absolutely lovely. And folks, let me... Yeah, absolutely. Stephanie: This was a delight. Thank you for this. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Folks, let me know in the comments what y'all thought. If y'all have any suggestions of authors or other points of view, just, I mean, we talked about a lot of things. So let us know in the comments, like, what resonated with you? You know the drill, don't forget to like, follow, subscribe. I know, the creator. Help me survive. Yeah, well, it's real. Stephanie: Yes, that's how we get to know each other. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Folks, this has been an episode of Follow the Leader. I'm your host, Leigh Larson, and until next time, see ya.