I was recently accepted into a graduate program in Tropical Conservation Biology. The piece below, one of my various attempts at personal essay writing, pre-existed my application, but was submitted with my materials, and may have helped seal the deal. Enjoy.
A countdown clock looms over Cat Canyon at the Sacramento Zoo, indicating that about 1.3 acres of rainforest are destroyed every second on the planet Earth. I look at that number each time I take my daughter to the zoo, and I cringe. I watch the families glancing at this alarming klaxon without any semblance of concern, or with outright cold indifference, and I cringe even further. For me, that constantly ticking counter, spinning always downward, is not just a bit of esoteric trivia. I’ve seen it happening. I’ve lived with the direct consequences, and I know to fear not only for the future of my children, but especially for the millions and billions of people who are increasingly directly impacted by the accelerating annihilation of our world’s treasure troves of biodiversity. But that diving number doesn’t just twist at my mind and my heart: it always brings me viscerally back to one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited, and to the day I had to run through fire to escape it.
Smoke stung my eyes, grated against my throat, and dueled with oxygen for access to my lungs. From the hilltop where I stood, swallowing the last drops of water available and panting after the exertion of the laborious climb up the impossibly steep dirt road, I could see a wide swath of the El Carbón village of northern Olancho, Honduras. Normally, the northern edge of the Sierra de Agalta National Park mountain range and the more distant mountains of Botaderos to the west would also be visible, etched against the sky and green in the tropically-intense sunlight. Today, the mountains were hidden, as invisible as if they did not exist, behind the thick curtain of grayness shrouding the land in every direction, an accumulated, choking mat fed by the dozen or so spirals of smoke I could see (and many more that I could not) rising from individual fires scattered liberally through the community. The burning season this year had started late. As a Peace Corps Volunteer living in Honduras, I had congratulated myself on a March and early April whose dry-season blue skies were clean of soot and ash. I thought my teaching efforts and the speechmaking of my local Honduran friends were bearing fruit. But the delay was deceptive. The late April arrival of Holy Week, a vacation from work and routine for the entire country, provided the opportunity the cattle ranchers and farmers needed. Gasoline and matches were plentiful, and the year had erupted into the worst slash-and-burn season on record in Honduras.
During most of the two burning seasons I had spent in Central America, I had avoided intense physical labor, feeling the constant scrape of the smoke in my throat and unable to draw enough breath to run or hike without coughing. After a week of vacation spent away from home, I had returned to my square, cinderblock house in the town of Gualaco to find the floor coated with a gray layer of ash that stirred visibly with each footfall. Soot speckled the surface of my furniture. Thinking of the impact of such particulates in my lungs, I worked indoors as much as possible and thought longingly about the rainy season, when the air would be washed clean and I could once again escape to the hills for my morning jogs.
Today, however, I had no choice. Physical exercise had become a must. I had left home before dawn on a seemingly minor venture to visit a stunning waterfall lying near El Carbón, a three-hour drive from Gualaco. A car-owning friend had offered to drive me out to the cascade. As most of my travels in Honduras were done by bus, it was rare that I had the privilege of riding in a private vehicle and I jumped at the opportunity. The drive had gone well, and the half-hour hike through wet broadleaf forest had been rewarded with our arrival at the wonder, as stunning as always. We had returned to the car in high spirits, intending to return to Gualaco before noon and spend the afternoon working in the national park visitors’ center. But surprises are ubiquitous in Honduras, and days rarely happen as planned. We began to back the car out of its resting place on the narrow dirt road and, with a suddenness that could have led to injury, the road collapsed beneath the vehicle’s weight. The logs that had been rolled into position to create the route had rotted away, and it was soon clear that we were not going to succeed in extracting the truck without the aid of another vehicle. Since we were a difficult three-hour hike from the nearest highway on which we could hitchhike, and an additional three hours by car from Gualaco, the nearest town large enough to have four-wheel-drive trucks, we had a long day ahead of us.
The climb through the smoke-ridden air had been tough enough, but now, as I stood looking over the steadily burning land, I could see with dismay that the hardest part still lay ahead. The fragmented landscape of crops, adobe huts, and isolated patches of trees rolled out before us to meet the beige slash of our goal, the dirt highway, in the distance. Between it and us, however, two of the crackling fires had been built just below our path and been left to crawl up the mountainside. Orange flames now rimmed both edges of the road and we saw that we would have to cover our mouths with bandanas to prevent smoke inhalation and run directly through the wildfires.
Several minutes later, our clothing and hair reeking of ash and our skin still flushed with the aftermath of the fires’ heat, we slowed our headlong run, our way now clear to the highway. The flames continued unabated in every direction, however, and I felt heartsick as we looked over the blackened land. Such destruction and pollution was no less damaging to the local people, soil, and remnants of wildlife than it had been to the forests that had once coated this valley and had long ago been consumed by pioneer fires. I knew that the isolated remnants of forest that remained on the higher reaches of the invisible mountains shrank more with each passing day as their edges were shaved away by fire. I wondered: how many years would it be before the secret marvel of the El Carbon waterfall would turn to a barren, sun-baked cliff face? And how many “El Carbons” around the globe are destroyed every year unnoticed, their passing unmourned?
As we made our way to the highway, I asked myself again in frustration whether the work I had tried to do here had really made any impact at all.
The breathtaking “El Carbon” waterfall, one of the world’s many secret tropical treasures threatened every day by habitat destruction. There I am on the right, getting a nice shower during one of my numerous visits. Will this waterfall still be there the next time I’m able to visit Honduras?
I want to return to the work of protecting these treasure troves. The rate at which the counter at the Sacramento Zoo spirals downward must slow. I am seeking a Master’s degree in Tropical Conservation Biology because I need to become a better scientist in order to collaborate effectively with others working to save these dwindling riches. I am excited that the program at ****** is interdisciplinary. I feel that, given my varied background and my strengths as a veteran, professional community organizer, I am well-suited to thrive as an asset in this academic community. Science alone will not save a single species from the many threats that face them. Likewise, conservation policies and practices must be informed by hard science if they are to be effective and sustainable. I aim to launch a career in environmental management where I can serve as a liaison between three worlds: the worlds of scientists, policy-makers, and local communities who have the most to gain or lose from conservation efforts. Completing my proposed research project exploring the effects of mutualism disruption on plant persistence and adaptation, and earning a Master’s degree will earn me the credibility and the skills I will need to join in the conservation of our precious and irreplaceable tropics.
[Please do not copy or reproduce any part of this essay for personal purposes. You do not have permission to borrow from it.]
docking here at 
