A Divided Life

Teaching makes me happy, I wrote at the end of this past semester. Teaching gives me energy. I made those notes because I knew that without summer school, I’d forget what I value in teaching. And with a whole semester of lessons to plan, I’m still trying to convince myself that there’s value in what I do.

For as long as I remember, there’s been a split in my life. On the one hand, science and the outdoors; on the other, writing and literature. I started out in the sciences. Lab jobs led me toward a physics or chemistry degree; with summer field jobs, that goal morphed toward botany and birds.

I like plants. In our family, my ex-husband and one daughter and I all know plant names. We spent years studying birds and plants and monkeys in Africa, later doing rare plant surveys for the Forest Service and BLM. Every summer, I’d alternate between two lives: my forestry editing job during the week, and then long weekends of tromping the mountains of eastern or southern Oregon, finding plants.

But at the same time, I’ve always been a reader and writer. And when I chose to go back to school in my forties, I could imagine teaching writing, but not botany. After five life-changing years in school, I became a full-time English teacher. And it’s been a very satisfying life. I love my students; I love what I teach.

Yet a part of me still craves the outdoors. Since moving to California, I’ve spent more and more time in the mountains. The flora is all new; it was several years before I could recognize most of the plants. Even now, I’m an amateur – but for most of the flowers, I can figure out names from the pretty-picture books. And often I can intuitively guess the family and genus – in Latin. After years of typing plant lists for forestry papers and plant surveys, I can spell them all.

Much of the year, I spend time in the mountains. Living next to the Sierra Range, I find spring flowers blooming from February through August (if I climb high enough). I’ve landed in a great place for botany.

It surprises me that most of my Blog entries have been about the outdoors. I thought there’d be more of a balance – outdoor postings, teaching postings. But when I teach – and when I grade – it absorbs all my attention. When I hike, there’s time to think: about plants, about teaching, about the next thing I want to write.

Hiking and the outdoors add to everything else I do. At one point, I realized I’d just explained four different species of birds – in a poetry class. And now, as I try to move back into teaching, I have to remind myself that teaching, too, enriches my life.