180: The Forest Raised Me Better than My Father

Allison Langer  0:40  
I'm Alison Langer.

Andrea Askowitz  0:16  
I'm Andrea Askowitz and this is Writing Class Radio. You'll hear true peronal 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. 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 what we workout are sh**. There's no place in the world like writing class, and we want to bring you in. 

Allison Langer  0:47  
Today on our show, we bring you a story by Darby Burgle that was originally performed on stage at the Flagstaff Festival science in October 2023. Like Episode 174 175 177, and 179 This was a collaboration with ECOS, the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society at Northern Arizona University, as well as Story Collider, a podcast that airs true science stories. So a couple years back, Jane and Bruce, who are both scientists and PhD professors at NAU, in the ecos lab came to us and said, Hey, we want to more we want to personalize our science stories. So they started taking our classes. And they were writing about so much science, do you remember that we were like, ah, too much science. And but now oh my god, Jane today, in first draft just shared a story that was equal parts science and personal, and I cared so much. And maybe it wasn't even equal parts. It was just enough science to intrigue me. And so that's what we did with these guys. They hired us to come and teach their PhD students to do the same to be able to put just enough science into a story to make people care, but also the personal side, so that it raises the stakes.

Andrea Askowitz  2:04  
 And that's exactly what Darby Burgle does in today's story.

Allison Langer  2:08  
We taught them to bring in just enough science to have people really care about the science but then not be bored. But then enough personal to make us understand why this person fell in love with science and wants to help our world become a better place and also to interrupt this climate change and hopefully solve some problems.

Unknown Speaker  2:29  
If we understand why a scientist cares, then we care.

Allison Langer  2:35  
Yeah, and we trust them one scientist at a time. So that's how this all came together. Darby story is about resilience and survival in the face of a volatile family, and a crumbling home. And what she does is she intertwines her passion for ecology in the study of carbon dynamics in temperate forests, to really drive home a point that our forests are caring for not just her, but all of us. So...

Andrea Askowitz  3:02  
Awe that's so beautiful. How you said that.

Allison Langer  3:05  
That's true. We got to care about them.

Andrea Askowitz  3:06  
 Yeah, because the forest cares about us. And that's where you're gonna hear in Darby story after the break.

We're back. This is Andrea Askowitz and you're listening to writing class radio. Up next is Darby Burgle, telling her story, from ashes to growth, navigating life's disturbances and finding resilience.

Darby Bergl  3:43  
I'm 11 years old. I'm standing in the forest behind my house. And the ground is made up of pine cones and pine needles. I'm watching the sun trade places with the moon. There's this giant tree standing next to me with this beautiful white bark. And its leaves are changing from shades of green to yellow, and orange. There's this familiar scent in the air. It comes at the end of every summer. And it kind of reminds me of the candle that my mom burns religiously, with the name pine. It's cold outside. And so I'm wrapped in a blanket. And I feel so at home here. I look down at the ground and I see this beautiful purple flower to kind of looks like the snapdragons in the garden. And it has this fuzzy weird looking pod nested just right below the flower. And it looks like the peas that I had for dinner the other night so I need to know what this thing is about. And I put it in my mouth. And I immediately get this numbing sensation throughout my entire body. And all I can feel is the fuzz of this pod and my mouth. My instincts are telling me to spit it out. So I do. And I continue walking further and further into my forest taking right turns, and left turns, until I noticed that the sun has been completely replaced by the moon. I go inside for dinner, I sit down at that wooden dining room table. And I can hear my dad coming down the staircase. His body is uncoordinated. He's slamming against every wall on the way down. And his feet sound heavy. When he sits down at the table, he slumped in his chair. All he can say is what's for dinner. It's never How is your day? Do you need help for homework. And it's in these moments that I realized the forest just outside the window that I'm looking at, is doing a better job at raising me than my own father. And I look over and I see my wiener dog Cricket. And she's just scratching at the double wide wooden front doors to go back outside. And I want back outside to I went back into the forest, it feels like my sanctuary. I have that exact same itch. Eight years have passed by. I'm now 19 years old. And in the years that have passed by, I've noticed my forest is changing. The colors on the aspen trees are coming later and later. I no longer need a blanket to wrap myself in at the end of the day because it's warm outside. And the air there was so crisp and so fragrant. Smells like Ash. And I have so many questions I need to know what's going on. Is this what climate change looks like? Are the leaves always going to change colors later and later into the growing season? And so I turned to science to answer these questions. In my early college years, I found myself in labs, looking under microscopes and using pipettes and taking various plant material and grinding it up until it was unrecognizable. Placing it into these tiny little tubes and extracting the DNA to figure out what was causing all this plant death. And I was in wetlands, trying to restore these ecosystems back to the healthiest state that they were in before so that we could benefit from the ecosystem services that they provide us with. And I want you all to know that it was in these wetlands in labs that I learned that that seed pod could have killed me. That was the most toxic part of the Lupin plant. But it was no surprise to me that against all odds, the forest let me survive. But there was one thing missing from these labs and these wetland ecosystems. I wasn't in the forest. And now here I am 25 years old in Flagstaff, Arizona, getting my PhD, and I'm back in the forests. But this time, I've traded those pine needles and pine cones for leafs that are sometimes as big as my head. These forests are made up of maple trees, oaks, beech and birch, I spent part of my summer driving through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. And let me tell you, that is the kind of forest that you would see on a magazine titled the top 10 most beautiful forests in the world, except for the ticks. And as I'm looking at this forest, I'm realizing that I can see beyond what's just there. And I'm peeling the layers back. And I'm using these instruments mounted to these towers. They are standing above this canopy. And they're measuring the exchange of co2 with the plants bringing it in from the atmosphere and the microbes releasing it back. And what I'm realizing is that this forest story is written in carbon. When I come back to my computer, and I crunched the data, and I look at the numbers, the forest is telling me that it's responding to a changing world around it. It's revealing an unsettling truth. Over the past two decades here, this forest has been storing less and less carbon. And some years the microbes are actually winning the race against the plant. And this ecosystem is releasing more carbon than it's storing. It's losing its ability to fight climate change in the way we desperately need it to. And this loss is our loss. And when I look back on my 19 year old self, I realized that I've answered so many of my own questions. But now I feel like I'm in a race against time. A race to save my sanctuary. The place that raised me and I'm learning all this now, so that I can protect the forest in the same way is always protected me. Thank you.

Allison Langer  11:08  
I love Darby so much.

Andrea Askowitz  11:10  
So much.

Allison Langer  11:11  
She's so sweet except for the tics. Like I just love art and her little giggle and stuff. These kids all these scientists, man, they're not like the scientists of old like they're friggin cool ass human beings. 

Andrea Askowitz  11:28  
Scientists of the old. 

Allison Langer  11:30  
Yeah, like the weirdos like the Einsteins, and shit.

Andrea Askowitz  11:34  
I love, love, love her voice at that tick moment. Like she's describing the world's most beautiful forest, except for the ticks. I wrote. She's so real. That's, that's how I felt about her the whole entire time. 

Allison Langer  11:49  
Same. 

Andrea Askowitz  11:50  
So I want to look at that. Because right from the beginning, she's like, this 11 year old kid. And there's like this wonder about her. The way she's like sitting there looking at the colors and this smelling the, the way she describes the smell a candle called Pine. 

Allison Langer  12:08  
Yeah. 

Andrea Askowitz  12:09  
That's so good. And then the temperature. Did you notice this when she like after she eats the pod? And she's like, right turns left turns. I was like, there was totally an Alice in Wonderland effect there. Like she just captured this little kid, wonder thing. I don't know, she did such a good job with that. Her voice is the thing that I think is most outstanding about this piece. And then it gets kind of serious.

Allison Langer  12:38  
About the dad. Yeah. And you know, this is very difficult. I find for myself when I'm writing because often I'll be writing a story that has nothing to do well, it's, I don't want to tell this story. But it kind of has a tiny bit to do with it. So how do you drop in information, but like, keep moving and leave your reader satisfied. I feel this scenario did it she showed us who her dad is just a little bit. So we got an idea of why she needed the forest to take care of her. And then she just moved on 

Andrea Askowitz  13:10  
100%. 

Allison Langer  13:12  
And I love that about it so much. Because of course I wanted to know way more about how she grew up the dad what was going on hadn't she survived all that like that. That's not what this story is. So she didn't want to detract from or distract from the message he was trying to get across. So love that part.

Unknown Speaker  13:30  
This comes up all the time and writing class all the time where a student wants to go off on a huge tangent, where there's questions from the class. And this story actually is a really great example of how No, the story is not about the relationship between the narrator and her dad. The story is about the relationship between the narrator and the forest. 

Allison Langer  13:57  
Exactly.

Andrea Askowitz  13:57  
Yeah. 

Allison Langer  13:58  
And then she shows us over time, which I thought was really cool. So 11, then 19 and 25, about how the forest is changing. 

Unknown Speaker  14:06  
Wait, I wanted to say something about that. Because she did such a great job of jumping in time. She just said eight years later. Yeah, she's out there again. And she brings back the colors. The colors are different. It's warmer, and the smell is different. But what she did so well is she just moved us in time. And we were never lost. I was never lost. So that's another thing that comes up in writing class all the time. Like how do I move to like a different moment in time, like, okay, just leave a page, break a whitespace on your paper or just pause for a second when you're telling a story and then say years later, this narrator did it really well. Very cool. Did you love the way she said, I want you all to know, that seed pod could have killed me.

Allison Langer  14:56  
 And it shows us that the forest took care of her, you know, and so Oh, yeah, I loved it so much. 

Andrea Askowitz  15:02  
And then that brings us to the end where, where she tells us that now she's gonna race to save the place that took care of her. 

Allison Langer  15:11  
Yeah. But before that even she gives us an idea of what's going on scientifically, with the trees, the carbon, the atmosphere, the climate change. And so we're like, oh my god, here's this totally personal story about why she got into science, and why it's taking care of her. And we're so excited. And then she really crushes us with like, and by the way, you're killing my forest.

Andrea Askowitz  15:34  
Right? And also, she does this thing that is so this is this is something that Bruce Hungate taught us. He's she's telling a story about her love and her the way that the forest takes care of her. And she slips in real science, she tells us that the forest is storing less and less carbon. It's losing its ability to fight climate change. Now I'm like, Oh, I understand something now about what we need the forest to do. So she snuck in a real science lesson. Cool Darby.

Allison Langer  16:08  
Killer. It's awesome. Yeah.

Andrea Askowitz  16:10  
I learned something. And then she lands it with why or what? where she is now in a race to save the place that saved her. God damn beautiful.

Allison Langer  16:21  
Knowing these kids are really talented. And I'm so glad they're telling their stories. And I'm so glad that they're doing the science that's saving our world. I believe in them. And I hope everyone stops screwing our environment up as best as they can.

Andrea Askowitz  16:36  
Thank you. Darby Burgle for telling your story. And thank you for listening.

Allison Langer  16:52  
Thank you, ECOS, NAU, Story Collider and Bruce Hungate and Jane Marks for bringing science to the mainstream. Darby Burgle is a PhD student at NAU in the center for Ecosystem Science and Society at Northern Arizona University. Darby's research focuses on the interactions between the climate system and soil biochemistry and terrestrial ecosystems. She is interested in utilizing radiocarbon techniques and modeling approaches to comprehend how sea cycle turnover and storage will change over time, and how this relates to the global sea cycle. She plans to use the findings of a research to participate in roundtable discussions about the carbon budget in northern hardwood forests with stakeholders, policy advisors and community members. I don't think I'll be at that table.

Andrea Askowitz  17:41  
We're not going to be at the table but I think we're gonna want to I want us to work a little bit on personalizing their bios because...

Allison Langer  17:51  
Well, this is on the ecos website. So I think when people are looking at like, you know jobs, things that are like science related who do we contact if we need information on this, like they have to pile in the science so this is not dumbed down for us.

Andrea Askowitz  18:06  
 Okay, these are scientists these are so okay. Okay, good. All right, my back. 

Allison Langer  18:09  
For more science stories, check out the Story Collider Podcast and stay tuned for more science stories from the festival. Writing Class Radio is hosted by me Alison Langer and me Andrea Askowitz. audio production by Matt Cundill, Evan, Surminsky, Chloe Emond-Lane, and Aidan Glassy at the Sound Off Media Company. Theme music is by Justina Shandler. There's more writing class on our website, including stories we study editing resources, video classes, writing retreats, and the best online classes. If you want to write with us every week, or if you're a business owner, community activist, scientist, group that needs healing entrepreneur and you want to help your team write better check out all the classes we offer on our website, writingclassradio.com. Join the community that comes together for instruction and excuse to write in the support from other writers. To learn more, go to our website or patreon.com/writingclass radio. A new episode will drop every other Wednesday.

Andrea Askowitz  19:12  
There is 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 19:25  
Produced and distributed by the Sound Off Media Company.