i, on the other hand, had a plan. well, to be more precise, i had yearning. for getting away, for getting into nature. i was going to the canyon. no, not that canyon. something closer to home. cloudland canyon, in the northwest corner of georgia, bordering alabama and tennessee.

however, i would have to leave soon if i were to make it in time for sunrise — it was just after 2:00 a.m. and i had a three hour drive ahead of me. i racked my brain and gathered everything i thought i may need, shoved them into my car, and got on the road— i would not sleep that night.

my drive was long, quiet, and peaceful  — and then i was there. i got out of the car, took a deep breath of green, and began walking to the first overlook on the edge of a cliff. i had the place mostly to myself. distant waves of fading green and amber. singing birds gliding about. i then realized that the main trail of the canyon was the other way, so off i went.  

sitting at the head of the trail was a set of wooden adirondack chairs set up to take in the view.

the wood was soft, chilled, smooth, and inviting, so i plopped down and gazed at the landscape.  these chairs sure had a good thing going for them. they faced a tree-spotted cliff with a wooden fence to corral guests from going off the edge. beyond it were grassy hills rolling into the nothingness of the horizon.

i sat a long time. i was in no rush. finally, my stomach growled, as i had not eaten all night. so, it was time to head back and find that restaurant i had seen a few miles away.

with some fuel in my stomach, it was time to hike the trails. there was green everywhere — i would have to come back in autumn to see fall colors. as i went on, i noticed how the opposing side of the valley had another tree covered rock outcrop—like a mirror. i  found a large stone ledge i could stand on, unguarded by a fence, that would allow me to witness it all, undisturbed.

i continued, eventually reaching a large natural pool. i waded my legs into the translucent water, flinching at the cold.

i heard a low rumble and looked up to see that the pool was being filled by a small waterfall surging over the cliff. as i grew closer to the fall, the rumble took on specific notes. on some rocks, the water fell in tones of a low rumbling bass, on others, a jolting treble. people were standing on these rocks, using the fall as a makeshift shower of sorts. i joined in, clothes and all. they would dry.

i started back, but when i reached the entrance of the pool, i noticed another trail going in the opposite direction. this trail was littered with debris — rocks and large tree limbs. i ducked under the limbs, most of which were fallen trees that had gotten stuck between the sides of the cliffs. i crawled, climbed, and maneuvered around the rocks, trying not to fall into the pools of water trapped in their floors. finally, i reached the end. it opened up to water flowing off the edge of a rock. it was beautiful. there was a small snake squirming around. i found a dry spot on the rock to sit — it was cool to the touch — and hung my legs over the edge. when i looked down, i saw the same people who were just in the pool with me. i realized i had gone around the back to the source of the waterfall. i sat and took in this view for a while, before deciding it was probably time to head back to my car. back to the suburbs. back home.

when you pull into the gravel lot outside the visitor nature center, you realize that this is the last point of contact with civilization for the next 36 hours. suddenly, you’re pulling your canoe packed with all the basic survival necessities into the dark marshy waters and sending yourself off into the great unknown. the first waterway is underwhelming. it seems like many other small rivers in georgia, lined with overgrown brush and grassy banks. but as you turn the bend, the greenery on either side opens up and you are met with a view, the likes of which you have never seen. the large river is perpendicular to your boat, extending on either side for as long as the eye can see. there is a clear view of the sky, which is overcast but coats the scene in a serene gray beauty.

a steady sort of quiet hangs in the air, a settled sense of stillness that does not exist in the day-to-day life of suburban america. the water smells fresh, not dasani fresh, but rather the fresh scent that comes from the earth. your canoe paddle slices into water so dark that it acts as a mirror, reflecting the cyprus knees, slash pine, loblolly, and other trees of this place.

floating downstream, your stomach drops when you catch a glimpse of this land’s queen: the american alligator. the upper half of the intimidatingly enormous creature cuts through the water, her body elegantly moving forward. you row hard and try and keep up, and your shoulders burn as you watch her disappear into the scenery.

the sun begins arching downward, and you start to make your way toward your campsite after a long day of navigating narrow streams that wind through groves of bald cypress trees emerging out of the murky swamp. your body feels exhausted in a way that is reminiscent of the days you spent as a child playing all day in the yard with your friends, and you feel a great sense of relief when you arrive at the campsite. you bring your canoe parallel to the dock floating among the shining lily pads and gleeful golden trumpet pitchers.

once you finish setting up your tent and sleeping bag, you settle in for a snack as the day finally rests into night. the air shifts from hot and wet humidity to a misty coolness. just as you feel your eyes start to close and you drift off to sleep, you are awoken by the sight of a sparkling night sky. gazing upward, it seems as if the space is taken up more by stars than darkness. a paint splatter of stardust fills the vast dome and the water reflects it below you as well, creating an all-encompassing cocoon of magic. you wrap yourself tighter in your puffy sleeping bag to the sounds of bugs chirping and frogs humming. this melody peacefully lulls you to sleep.

there is something so wonderful and eye opening about traveling into an environment in which you are forced to immerse yourself into a different culture. in fact, i would argue that nature itself has a culture. one all but forgotten to people in overpopulated cities and even the suburbs.

shuang qiao is a farming community in the guangxi province of china. it’s probably a poor, shabby place in the eyes of most city dwellers — but not for me.

as a child, i saw this as a mystical place, a paradise almost. the mountains were simply waiting for me to climb up and explore. they spread far beyond the village. rivers and swamps hummed with insects which we children would always try to catch using plastic bottles. these areas were slippery, often tripping us as we ran in bare feet. we laughed about it most of the time and i did not have a care in the world during those moments.

the community was warm and tight-knit, as i recall that many of the residents would leave their front gates open for others to wander through. it was common for a single household to host neighborhood dinner nights, which my grandparents actively participated in. the home could easily fit up to a hundred people. sometimes, the hot stuffy air would convince them to buy popsicles for my cousins and i at the market. i played with my cousins frequently, alongside other kids in the neighborhood. our favorite activity was playing tag in the vast, open courtyard occupying the middle of the home. the nearby playground was a close second.

a large number of chickens and dogs would roam about the village, which added to the pungent mix of farm smells. the pigs, cows, and chickens were kept just down the street from home. flies were so abundant that we would constantly need to cover the outdoor living room with sticker paper.

at the front of the neighborhood stood a magnificently old magnolia tree. its leaves were painted a variety of red and orange and its trunk was always sticky with sap. this tree always felt so inviting. people would spend much of their free time taking naps and playing cards beneath it. it was popular with us kids as well, of course, being the perfect “base” for our game of tag. during special holidays, we watched as the nighttime brimmed with yellow sparklers from all across the village.

at that time my family lived in nanning, a big bustling city in the south of china. i was in the village for my summer vacation, so back then, i felt a bit like an outsider.

my father would have to pick me up eventually to resume school, but i never wanted to leave. i wanted to stay within the confines of mountains and rivers. i wanted to live around the presence of farm animals and kids whose faces were always dirtied from the outdoors. i wanted to continue exploring this fantasy of a land for as long as i was alive. the adults would often tease me about this connection i had with the village, with the spirit of nature i felt within it. i was humbled, in a way.

i was not burdened with heavy responsibilities at this time and i was too young to ponder the meaning of life. my head was empty besides feelings of playfulness and hunger. i saw the innocence and purity of nature very clearly, more so than i do today through the lens of adulthood. the appreciation was genuine because i was immediately able to reap the benefits of an endless playground. a sense of joy which i may never feel anywhere else is in that village, in the raw, natural world. i believe that humans were truly meant to live close to the land.

i would like to think that at the age of 20, given the opportunity to live outside of modern standards, i would be just as happy as i was in the past.

after the race we caught a bus headed back to the start line, and walked the remaining distance, maybe a mile, back home to our motel room. by that point, it was almost afternoon, but wanting to make the most of every minute, we decided to squeeze in one more hike before we got on the road for good that evening. we packed up as fast as we could, with all the rest of our belongings thrown messily in the trunk of our dusty silver hyundai santa fe rental. the hike itself was beautiful and we stayed there for the remainder of the day, playing in the rocks, taking pictures and tracing where other hikers had traveled before us. when it started getting darker we turned back towards the trailhead. i remember thinking on the walk back, how much i was looking forward to sleeping while my mom drove the next three or so hours to moab.

i tried to close my eyes that drive, but as we traveled further away from the faint lights of the last small town, the light from the stars began to keep me awake. at one point they grew so bright i could see the outlines of the canyons surrounding us across at the other end of the valley. my head still pressed against the glass of the window; i heard the audible rush of the wind outside the car roaring around us. aside from some animal whose silhouette crossed the road far ahead, we were the only living things in sight. going 80 down the freeway, it felt like we were flying.

my mom, at some point during the drive, asked me if i’d like to play some music, seeing that i was still awake. unsure of what would fit the mood or time of day, i just hit shuffle on some disco music, and softly beaming out of the speakers sang the band chic, followed by some kc & the sunshine band and donna summer. we each took turns dialing up the music, song by song, until it was suddenly blaring out of the speakers. my mom opened the sunroof so i rolled down the windows. then for the rest of the drive, as were cutting our way out of the last stretches of the canyons, we were singing every word together. i do not even remember arriving in the next city, but my mom and i both remember every moment of that drive together. that night kicked us both off on a new chapter in our relationship as best friends and adults.

i did not realize it at the time, but i would come to savor that night and the relationship with my mom it left me with. the carefree events of the day encapsulated what had been the theme of my entire life and childhood prior and served as a wonderful conclusion to that chapter of my life. when we got home from that trip everything would soon be different. what i did not know that night was that my gran would die just a few months later of a cancer that we, at that time did not even know she had. her death would send both my mom and me into a series of emotional hardships that, while we could not have survived without each other, still led me to transfer schools in the middle of a semester. i was also inspired by that trip to stick with distance running and the peace it gave me. my mother is still my best friend.  

in my life now, i still think daily about the blessings i received from my time in the canyons. when i hear disco music, i am reminded of how the person who i was when i entered the canyons trail was not the same one who left them. concealed in darkness across hundreds of miles of the most beautiful part of america, i thank that section of utah for that serendipitous moment and the joy, freedom and friendship it brought me. the place gave me a joy i knew would be waiting for me again. in hindsight of it all, the blessing from god given to us in the canyons gave my mom and me the gift of each other and still gives me a moment to root into when i feel disconnected from the important parts of everything else.

i stumbled into science reporting, so i thought lisa palmer’s science reporting class would be a good way to dive in.

in class, we learned how essential science reporters are for the public’s knowledge of what goes on around them, and it became even more apparent as coronavirus news dominated discussions in class. my mentor for my environment reporting internship at the guardian, emily holden, simply puts it in her twitter bio, “i report what people do to the environment and what it does back to them.” 2020 is a banner year for science reporting – news sources are our lifelines for coronavirus information and interpreting the effects of climate change, which are only getting worse. as simple as it is, i came back to emily’s twitter bio often throughout my internship.

my first and second stories were studies that emily picked up from alerts – a new study showed that 1,000 metric tons of microplastics rain down on our protected parks each year and the other linked air pollution to an increased risk of childhood obesity. they were both short write-ups but came with plenty of lessons about fact-checking and connecting that science to the audience, which we talked a lot about in professor palmer’s class. science reporters are interpreters. it’s hard for scientists to communicate with the general public. their studies are filled with complex figures and niche terms that are lost on the public, and interviewing them means being willing to ask dumb questions to get to the meat of their research. 

i became very, very comfortable with asking those dumb questions. in an interview for the article “60% of fish species could be unable to survive in current areas by 2100 – study,” one of the scientists even laughed at one of my questions. it was a blow to my ego, but it ended up being an important part of the article. i learned to fact check every single line because if you get something wrong, readers will let you know, and sometimes they’re not so nice about it. about 15 minutes after i published the story “rare shark attack in maine may be linked to marine protection efforts“, i received an email from a shark scientist accusing me of spreading false alarmist messaging about shark attacks. after a phone call with her, i tweaked the headline and some of the descriptions of shark migration and walked away with the important lesson to always fact check your sources – even if they’re trusted scientists.

then i learned to always relate the science to the readers. microplastics are raining down on protected parks, but so what? that’s where i learned to dig deep and do that extra research to make that human link, like finding health concerns, inequities, or what our political leaders are doing (or not doing) about it. it was challenging to find that connection for some articles, especially “alarm as pesticides spur rapid decline of us bird species,” but also in some other articles like “coronavirus pandemic prompts record drop in global emissions, study finds.” but scientists can help you find that connection too, and i learned to always ask a version of “so what” in my interviews.

in the article “congress approves billions for us national parks in rare bipartisan push,” i had to make that connection to science through policy, which required i brush up on some civics. after reporting mostly studies, this article was a nice break – the policy led me to the science, and usually it’s the opposite. i learned to use people and the money to explain the impact this bill would have on the environment, which was a good reminder to always look at the bigger picture of science in the community.

i struggled with this the most on a feature story i worked on for the entirety of the internship. it was an analysis of trees in america’s big cities, which seems like a trivial topic but once i started looking into it, many cities were bad at planting trees in lower-income and black neighborhoods, taking away their shade in one of the hottest summers on record. it was a frustrating article – i always needed more information, another interview, something else to pull the story together, and then digesting those weeks of reporting into 800 words took a lot of trial and error. but i always came back to what i learned in professor palmer’s class and asked myself, what information do people care about? what science matters in this story? and am i interpreting those facts? looking back, this article was a culmination of all the fact-checking and science communication skills i’d developed in class and throughout the internship. after weeks of analyzing city policy, reading climate plans, and talking to community members, i finally published: “us cities are spending millions on trees to fight heat – but are their plans equitable?“

the most important realization i walked away from this internship with is that science reporting is crucial for the time we’re living in. our feeds are clogged with misinformation and opinions, not facts, about science, and science reporters are on the frontlines of fighting those false narratives. every article i wrote was a piece to a puzzle showing the big picture of climate change. looking back, it’s scary. my articles tell a story of climate change disproportionately affecting minorities, causing major health issues, killing thousands of species, ruining our land. but they all put us one step closer towards understanding the science behind what we do to the earth and what it does back to us.

the effects of urban heat on human health can be significant and are likely to worsen as a result of climate change. if supported by further studies, the research results have clear policy implications, highlighting an adaptive mechanism via which humans can ameliorate the impact of climate change on urban populations.

cities are particularly vulnerable to climate change because they are warmer than rural areas. asphalt roads, tar roofs and other artificial surfaces absorb heat from the sun, creating a heat-island effect that can raise temperatures by an average 2-5 degrees fahrenheit (about 1-3 degrees celsius). white roofs reflect some of that heat back into space and thus cool temperatures–much as wearing a white shirt on a sunny day causes one to feel cooler than wearing a dark shirt.

researchers used a new computer model, designed to assess the impacts of a changing climate on urban populations and to explore options for countering rising temperatures. while the model did not capture individual cities, it did show the white roof effect in large metropolitan regions. the new york area, for example, would cool by almost 2 degrees fahrenheit on summer afternoons.

the model simulates the amount of solar radiation that urban surfaces absorb or reflect, capturing such factors as the influence of roofs, walls, streets and green spaces on local temperatures. the researchers then analyzed the interactions of global climate change and urban areas.