201: What Can You Learn by Watching How Trees Recover from Fire?

Andrea Askowitz  0:03  
Hi, I'm Andrea askowitz. 

Allison Langer  0:06  
I'm Alison Langer, and this is writing class radio. You'll hear true personal stories and learn how to write your own stories. Together, we produce this podcast, which is equal parts heart and art. By heart we mean the truth in a story, and by art we mean the craft of writing, no matter what's going on in our lives, writing class is where we tell the truth. It's where we work out our shit. There's no place in the world like writing class. And we want to bring you

Andrea Askowitz  0:33  
in today. We bring you a story told Live at the Flagstaff festival of science. That was in September of 2024 this is the second year we've collaborated with the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, which is called ecos at Northern Arizona University. And I just wanted to say I feel so lucky to get to work with these brilliant people. I know me too. Yeah, not only because they're brilliant, but because they're trying to save the planet. Yeah, there they are, if you're just tuning in, or if you're a longtime listener and you don't remember, two years ago, we were hired by Dr Jane marks and Dr Bruce Hungate, two famous, totally famous, ecologists, biologists, scientists from ecos at Northern Arizona University. So they heard our podcast, and then they started taking our classes, which led to the idea that their students would benefit from taking our

Allison Langer  1:29  
classes, our online classes, yeah. And then they even came in person,

Andrea Askowitz  1:33  
yeah, so we've been doing online classes and in person classes. Oh, well, Jane and Bruce came to our right, yeah, they're loyal. They're full timers. Yeah, they are. They come to lots of our classes. We love them. Since then, we've been doing in person workshops and online workshops with their students to help them personalize their science stories and the stories are amazing. The thing is, I've learned so much about science because I've been like drawn in by their personal lives. So on this episode, we're talking about making connections from your personal life to what you study, and we're also talking about being vulnerable, because everyone will love you more, we promise. Today's story is by Megan Quinn. She's a master's degree student in the biology department at Northern Arizona University.

Allison Langer  2:35  
Back with Megan's story after the break, we're back. I'm Allison Langer, and you're listening to writing class radio. Here's Megan Quinn reading her story live at the Flagstaff festival of science. Her story is called destruction and regrowth.

Megan Quinn  2:56  
A mix of fear and excitement stirred inside me when I glanced at my watch, almost lunch time. I just had to finish this transect. I was on day six out of my eight day hitch studying a recent fire scar, and my whole body was covered in ash. I headed back to the truck among the burnt and brittle trees, their blackened limbs hanging like ghosts over my head. My trail mix bag was full, and I knew I should dump a small portion into my container. That was my rule, but I was exhausted, too tired to grab the container from the back seat. I reached inside the bag, and that's when I lost control. It was like a trap door opening over a bottomless shaft. I had the urge to eat everything in the world. I shoveled popcorn and nuts into my mouth, half of my brain screaming to fill the pit, and the other half screaming to stop. When half of the 30 ounce bag was in my stomach. I threw the bag into the truck. My brain shouted, you're a failure. You can't control yourself. This feeling was crippling. I've always made sure I had the highest grades as was the most gnarly skier and mountain biker, because maybe if I was the best, I would have worth some justification for being alive. When I moved to Flagstaff to attend graduate school in biology here at NAU Suddenly, I felt as far from the best as I've ever been. I was the youngest graduate student, and I assumed the least competent i. Black staff sits at 7000 feet above sea level, which is pretty high with my sea level lungs and larger build, I no longer felt like an athlete without my best student status and athleticism to support my self esteem, I didn't know who I was anymore. So since my undergraduate, I've struggled with food. I felt ashamed at the amount of food I ate to support my active lifestyle. I became seasoned at playing tiny games of restriction, and I discovered it gave me a sense of control when I was in control and able to restrict my food intake, I lost weight and people complimented me. Voila. I found an identity I had worth my food restriction led to anorexia, the mental health illness with the highest death rate. This restriction completely took over my brain and my life. One time, I sat with a friend on the edge of a mountain bike trail while she wheeze from an asthma attack. She was scared and needed her friend, but the only thing I could think about was the extra workout I need to do to make up for resting. I was experiencing physical symptoms of anorexia, exhaustion. When I drove I was unable to keep my eyes open. Cold. I was constantly shivering, incontinence. My pelvic floor muscles had wasted away so much that sometimes while I was working out, I couldn't hold in my pee. That winter, I went home to visit my mom, and she was shocked at how skinny I looked. My friends pressed on me what I was eating. Their comments immediately made me defensive. I had built my identity around this disorder, and if they tried to take it away, I didn't know who I would be anymore. But after some thought, I realized I needed to feel better, especially for the upcoming summer of intense field work, but I was terrified of gaining weight. The solution I came up with of instead of eating more with the group, I would sneak out to the car to eat that way, I felt in control of my food intake, mostly raw vegetables, and didn't have to worry about anyone seeing how much I ate. When I started this routine, I realized I was starving. But what I didn't realize that my perception around portion side was portion size was so distorted that even though I was eating too little, it still felt like I was binging. After lunch on day six, I headed to an older site that burned 17 years ago. I made a deal to do a long run that night to make up for the extra trail mix, I ate and refocus on my field work. I needed to collect data for my thesis project, which looks at how wildfire affects pollinator habitat while counting the sea of flowers at the burn site, my mind ran in loops. Here in Jacobs lake, there aren't as many hills as Flagstaff. I'm going to get fat, for sure, the feeling of being a failure joined the loop in my mind, yelling at me that I was insignificant and worthless. A week before my second year of graduate school began, a friend sent me a video about an influencer who died from a diet of raw fruit and vegetables. I called my mom crying when she picked up, I said, I have an eating disorder I need help that was a little over one year ago. It hasn't been easy. My therapist says anorexia is one of the hardest mental disorders to recover from. I know what she means. The voices in my head scream, every scream and disgust, every time I look in the mirror, buy larger clothes or eat a new fear food. But through therapy, journaling and silent prayer and meditation, I'm learning to appreciate and love all aspects of myself, my curiosity, empathy and love of adventure. As I've immersed myself in the landscapes I study, I realized failure can be good. I study forests and fire. For a while we thought fire suppression was good, but without historic low intensity fire. Earlier, the forest became dense, the mosaic of meadows that supported wildflowers and pollinators disappeared. The build up of fuel caused wildflower fires to get bigger and spread quicker. These large, high intensity wildfires bring huge amounts of destruction and loss, and though I would never say high intensity wildfires are good, not everything about the destruction is bad. I'm finding downed trees from these fires provide a nesting source for pollinators and space for light to reach the understory, allowing wild flowers to grow, wildfires, events we consider a huge failure, might also be seen as a place for restoration and growth. I am the girl who ate the trail mix and also the woman covered in ash. Perhaps what I am going through is also also helping me grow into the person I am becoming. Thank you. You.

Andrea Askowitz  11:24  
I love how she brought together the failure, the idea of fire being a failure, and then the idea of fires doing things that help for regrowth, like have downed trees allow flowers to grow.

Allison Langer  11:41  
I really did, too. I mean, to me, that was my favorite part, and the most, the most powerful, because in order to process for her and heal, she had to relate to her work, to this passion that she has, and maybe doesn't have to, but the correlation is so I don't know significant that in order for her to heal, she's has to go through a little bit of destruction. And I think that's so true, not just for disordered eating, but also for any sort of learning process that we go through in life, addiction, but also mistakes, relationships, jobs, everything. Like, we kind of sometimes have to go through it to get through it, you know,

Andrea Askowitz  12:26  
yeah, I think you're a big proponent of that. Like, you're you think that, like, it's important for our kids to, like, fuck up, so that they learn on their own. Yeah, I get that. The part that I was most impressed by are, like, I just thought that, like her honesty, like the way that she was just willing to to tell with such such specific details about her portion control, about, oh my god, like when her friend was wheezing, all she was thinking about was how she was gonna have To make up that workout, and then what about the way that she realized that she really had a bad situation, because she was she had the symptoms of anorexia, like she was always shivering, but also sometimes she couldn't hold in her pee, like that, being that specific, just that said, Everything,

Allison Langer  13:21  
yeah, oh my god, this is not an adult. Like, we've been through it. We've peed all over the floor in the doctor's office. Like, this is a kid who's still under the pressures of, you know, maturity growing up, just the way kids are just hard on each other.

Andrea Askowitz  13:37  
Well, kid to us, I mean, she's probably in her 20s. She's a grad student,

Allison Langer  13:41  
I know, but my God, they're so influenced by everything. They're still trying to be liked. I mean, I'm still trying to be liked, but, like we were talking about earlier, I don't care so much about fashion anymore. I'm like, these are comfy. I think I'll wear them, right? But would you admit to an eating disorder? No peeing. I'd probably admit being before I would admit to an eating disorder.

Andrea Askowitz  14:06  
Oh, come on, admit all right. So the other part that was really cool was the way she was, like, sort of making sense of it throughout. So when she ate all the trail mix at the beginning, that's when she lost control, and then she was calling herself a failure. So then she linked in this idea of worth. She dropped that in, and that the worth idea kept coming back, and that I thought was really good storytelling, like she was really trying to figure out why she has this eating disorder, and what is it? What's the bottom line for her, and for her, it's, it's a feeling of worth

Allison Langer  14:47  
it's interesting, because for a lot of people, they're, you know, depriving themselves. Maybe I'll just use myself as an example so that I can look skinny, because to me, you know, it's important to look. Annie, well, maybe that's worth, for you, I don't know it's more control, but for for this narrator, it's, it's, it's worth, and maybe it's, it's all wrapped into into a lot of things. It's hard to pinpoint, but I just want to say that this is such an important story, because we're all struggling with something. And I just think we need to be easier on each other. We need to be supportive and really just appreciate one another and what we're going through. And I think often we feel like, Oh, look how cute that person is on Instagram or whatever. But everybody's going through something strong enough to share it.

Andrea Askowitz  15:38  
Yeah, I love that you just said that, because I've just been like, what are stories for? You know, been down about it, but when I hear this story, I feel like this story really matters. And maybe I always say that, but this one I feel like really matters. It matters so much to Megan Quinn, because he or she is, like, figuring herself out. But it's true that if anyone else is listening to this story and has ever struggled with like that moment when it's almost lunchtime and and that person is scared and excited, just that first line that was so well set up. But anyway, if anyone is feels like that, then that's what they will not, hopefully feel alone in that situation. And that's the coolest thing that Megan Quinn is doing. Well, one of the cool things, yeah.

Allison Langer  16:33  
But I mean, just the magic of crafting this story. She's not just telling like she's really telling two stories and linking them together, which I thought was kind of cool, yep, tying in because this was a Science Festival. So she couldn't just tell this one story. She had to really relate. And she found meaning in her work and how it related to her. And she could appreciate the understory and the fires and the wildflowers so much more because and then maybe she was able to look inside herself and say, Okay, I'm not a failure. This is just, I'm on my way to restoration. I needed this for other things to grow. And it's, you know, other characteristics that she has, and maybe now She's stronger. Like, remember when she got on stage and she was just like, I never thought I could do that

Andrea Askowitz  17:19  
the first time she read in class, yeah, yeah. She, like, slowly became wild flowers growing she did, and she nailed it on stage. Yeah, she did. She's, like, got solider and solider and solider. That's more solid okay. She didn't need to become solider, but she did.

Allison Langer  17:44  
Solider is not a word. Thanks, Matt. Our audio guy just put that up on the thanks for having to research it. He's Canadian. I got the message. Matt, thanks. Got it. Do you remember when you first started telling stories? People were like, Oh, my God, how. How can you tell that? Isn't that embarrassing. And now, like last night at my birthday party, you got up and told your whole story about the masseuse that we've all heard a million times but but what I'm trying to say is that the more you tell your secrets and your stories and all these things, they lose their power over us. Everyone loved you even more after your story last night, they weren't like, oh my god, that lady wanted her masseuse to have sex with her. You know what? I mean,

Andrea Askowitz  18:21  
that lady wanted a happy ending, yeah,

Allison Langer  18:25  
but I was like, expecting it, yeah, exactly, so I don't know the point. Point I'm trying to say is like, don't be afraid to share your vulnerabilities with people, because it will bring people

Andrea Askowitz  18:36  
closer. Thank you so much, Megan Quinn for bringing us closer, and thank you for listening. Megan Quinn is a master student in the biology department at NAU thank you to the Macalester program in community culture and the environment at Northern Arizona University and the staff at ecos, the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, and we're adding another s for story writing class. Radio is hosted by me Andrea askowitz and me Allison Langer. Audio production by Matt Cundill, Evan serminsky and Aiden glassy at the sound off media company. Theme music is by Justina Chandler. There's more writing class on our website, including stories we study, editing resources, video classes, writing retreats and live online classes, if you want to write with us every week, or if you're a business owner, community activist group that needs healing, entrepreneur science department, check out all our classes on writing class radio.com, join the community that comes together for instruction, an excuse to write and the support of other writers to learn more. Go to our website or patreon.com/writing. Class radio, you. A new episode will drop the first Wednesday of every month. Oh, you see, or maybe the second.

Allison Langer  20:08  
There's no better way to understand ourselves and each other than by writing and sharing our stories. Everyone has a story. What's yours?

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  20:18  
Produced and distributed by the sound off media company the.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai