I am from rural Madison County, Virginia, where I still care for family farmland at the base of Old Rag Mountain, adjacent to Shenandoah National Park - from which my grandparents were expelled at the founding of the park in the 1930s. I grew up working with grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts on an orchard of apples, cherries, and peaches. It is now registered as forestland, from which I'm slowly attempting to learn. The Monacan Nation recognizes that area as historic Mannahoac Territory. Living primarily in the Rivanna River watershed, I work in unceded Monacan Territory for a university built by enslaved laborers. For me, the work of ethics, religion, and environmental thought is often about reckoning with inheritances and creating ways to be a decent ancestor to next generations of this land.
A graduate of Madison County High School, I received my PhD from UVA in 2006, taught a few years for the Divinity School and the Environment School at Yale, before returning to this watershed in 2013 when UVA started an environmental humanities initiative.
I often follow birds into and through my research.