M.Sc. | Natural Resources and Environmental Studies National Dong Hwa University (Taiwan) Thesis: Recruitment limitation of Ficus benjamina var. bracteata in a karst forest of southern Taiwan B.Ed. | Intermediate and Secondary Geography and Biology Trent University (Canada) B.Sc. | Major: Earth Science, Minor: Biology Trent University (Canada) Honours Project: Hydrogeologial variability within watersheds & groundwater contamination Geologic Technician Diploma Sandford Fleming College (Canada) |
This is a long, lovingly effusive peek at who I am. At least why I am; why I am in Taiwan and why I am a field ecologist, writer, and teacher. It is told in two chapters, and it starts in a cement-walled university in Canada. A shorter more succinct version can be found on my home page.
If you wish to collaborate on any ecology-based projects, have tips or ideas for stories about Taiwan, or want to learn more about the non-profit and teaching activities I take part in across the country, please get in touch!
Chapter 1
I grew up fascinated by glaciers. And the frozen, icy, flat lands of the beautiful Canadian Arctic. It was to me a far off place, imaginable only through photos and books, yet close enough to be tangible; like a gorgeous painting within a closed gallery that I knew was there but could not touch. So I devoured the books – cultures building themselves up over generations on the ice, historical adventures of exploration, scientific sojourns – and dreamed of that gallery door one lucky day somehow opening. I remember saying to inside my fascinated mind when young and out loud to my family when older, “someday, I will see it for myself.”
And along the way I obsessed over glaciers, thick tongues of frozen water nested tightly into the arctic valleys they carved. Are carving; their relentless but slow wintertime growth etching valleys deeper, their acute summertime meltwater rushing off their surface and pulsing across the land. Glaciers were to me a mystery, an obsession, and a curiosity tucked within the Arctic.
As a geography undergraduate at Trent University, Canada, I had the realization that one day the dream and obsession could be a future – I could be a glaciologist. Galciology was part of the departments self; we were regailed with tales of previous professors and their adventures building up an understanding of Canada's glaciers. Glaciers were part of our university lore.
Academic zest and adventurous itch united one day in the hallowed basement halls of the Geography department. Leaving a meeting – I was at this point co-president of the geographical society, and we were planning outreach options for the coming semester – I saw a shadow of a person in the distance, posting something on the department bulletin board. My curiosity, along with the knowledge I had an hour to wait until the next bus, led me towards the board.
“Research Opportunity: Axel Heiberg Island Glacier Mass Balance Project. Student research assistant needed to study White Glacier and Baby Glacier.”
The names “white” and “Baby” were new, but the words “glacier” and “research assistant” stuck; I ran down the hall, took my first left, then a right, then cut straight through the communal area and slid to a stop by the door which held inside it the man who would change my life.
I knocked. It was late, but I just saw him post this. Maybe he is still here. Maybe.
I knocked again. The door swung open “Trevor, what brings you here?”
“Glacier. I want to apply. Glacier. Your research trip…”
“well,” he replied, “great.” If I was certain – he asked twice – he would add my name to the list of potential assistants, a list which was currently empty. It did not stay empty for long, though, and in time a close friend had applied. I told him to – he shared my same dream and it was only fair.
The day after the deadline hit he called us both into his office at lunch and gave us the bare-bones truth: “only one of you can come.” We both looked at each other, back at him, back at each other. “Funding limitations,” he clarified. Only the two of us applied, and he had to eventually choose. My dream was hanging by a thread; I was one person and three months away from going to the arctic to take my first steps to being a glaciologist!
“We can take a few drills out to the lake and see who drills faster” he mused aloud, followed by “or draw names….” My friend and I were still standing speechless, weighing the reality of this moment against our shared dreams. I would like to think I did not regret telling him to apply, and I would like to think that he was thanking me for at least urging him to get this far; I gather neither were true.
“Drill competition”, he finally blurted out after a collective pause. “Whoever drills the most holes in an hour gets to be the assistant.” An hour. Drilling with a hand-help auger. An hour.
“Ok” we both said, leaving the meeting and not talking of ice or drills or glaciers or anything resembling research-based conversation for the entire way home.
Then about a week later, as time had healed the impressive wound of fear of being cut out of the adventure and the experience, we were well into the next stage. “You should be the one” he told me, “you are stronger and have been talking about this for ages.” “No,” I would respond, “you should go, you are stronger and you have also been talking about this for ages.” This part was genuine; I wanted him to go as much as I wanted me to go and over our university years we both had put the academic work into being prepared to do the job well.
A few days later in the middle of a class a familiar head poked into our classroom, scanned and caught my eyes. He motioned to me to join him. I slid out and asked him what was up. He asked where my friend – the other applicant – was. “Library” I said. “After class go get him and meet me in my office.”
And I did just that. Nervous, but excited, I finished class and sprinted to the library where I caught my friend as he was leaving. Together we sprinted to the glacier office, as we then had started calling it, and knocked.
Ever the casual and unceremonious academic, he opened the door, looked at us and smirked. “What?” he said aloud – not asking, just saying. “You wanted to meet with us?” I said. He looked at us again, paused, and said the sentence that still rings in my head: “I decided.”
“Funding. It came in today. There is enough for two assistants, which is good because we have extra work this year and I need you both.”
***
Months later I was standing on a glacier, drilling ice and measuring snow and hiking moraines and walking with arctic foxes, hares, and wolves. For five weeks the three of us hiked glaciers and measured melt, snow compaction and depth, and I got to feel what it was like to be a real scientist. It changed me more than I imagined it would; I was decided, I was going to be a glaciologist.
Until I met Taiwan. Taiwan changed everything…
If you wish to collaborate on any ecology-based projects, have tips or ideas for stories about Taiwan, or want to learn more about the non-profit and teaching activities I take part in across the country, please get in touch!
Chapter 1
I grew up fascinated by glaciers. And the frozen, icy, flat lands of the beautiful Canadian Arctic. It was to me a far off place, imaginable only through photos and books, yet close enough to be tangible; like a gorgeous painting within a closed gallery that I knew was there but could not touch. So I devoured the books – cultures building themselves up over generations on the ice, historical adventures of exploration, scientific sojourns – and dreamed of that gallery door one lucky day somehow opening. I remember saying to inside my fascinated mind when young and out loud to my family when older, “someday, I will see it for myself.”
And along the way I obsessed over glaciers, thick tongues of frozen water nested tightly into the arctic valleys they carved. Are carving; their relentless but slow wintertime growth etching valleys deeper, their acute summertime meltwater rushing off their surface and pulsing across the land. Glaciers were to me a mystery, an obsession, and a curiosity tucked within the Arctic.
As a geography undergraduate at Trent University, Canada, I had the realization that one day the dream and obsession could be a future – I could be a glaciologist. Galciology was part of the departments self; we were regailed with tales of previous professors and their adventures building up an understanding of Canada's glaciers. Glaciers were part of our university lore.
Academic zest and adventurous itch united one day in the hallowed basement halls of the Geography department. Leaving a meeting – I was at this point co-president of the geographical society, and we were planning outreach options for the coming semester – I saw a shadow of a person in the distance, posting something on the department bulletin board. My curiosity, along with the knowledge I had an hour to wait until the next bus, led me towards the board.
“Research Opportunity: Axel Heiberg Island Glacier Mass Balance Project. Student research assistant needed to study White Glacier and Baby Glacier.”
The names “white” and “Baby” were new, but the words “glacier” and “research assistant” stuck; I ran down the hall, took my first left, then a right, then cut straight through the communal area and slid to a stop by the door which held inside it the man who would change my life.
I knocked. It was late, but I just saw him post this. Maybe he is still here. Maybe.
I knocked again. The door swung open “Trevor, what brings you here?”
“Glacier. I want to apply. Glacier. Your research trip…”
“well,” he replied, “great.” If I was certain – he asked twice – he would add my name to the list of potential assistants, a list which was currently empty. It did not stay empty for long, though, and in time a close friend had applied. I told him to – he shared my same dream and it was only fair.
The day after the deadline hit he called us both into his office at lunch and gave us the bare-bones truth: “only one of you can come.” We both looked at each other, back at him, back at each other. “Funding limitations,” he clarified. Only the two of us applied, and he had to eventually choose. My dream was hanging by a thread; I was one person and three months away from going to the arctic to take my first steps to being a glaciologist!
“We can take a few drills out to the lake and see who drills faster” he mused aloud, followed by “or draw names….” My friend and I were still standing speechless, weighing the reality of this moment against our shared dreams. I would like to think I did not regret telling him to apply, and I would like to think that he was thanking me for at least urging him to get this far; I gather neither were true.
“Drill competition”, he finally blurted out after a collective pause. “Whoever drills the most holes in an hour gets to be the assistant.” An hour. Drilling with a hand-help auger. An hour.
“Ok” we both said, leaving the meeting and not talking of ice or drills or glaciers or anything resembling research-based conversation for the entire way home.
Then about a week later, as time had healed the impressive wound of fear of being cut out of the adventure and the experience, we were well into the next stage. “You should be the one” he told me, “you are stronger and have been talking about this for ages.” “No,” I would respond, “you should go, you are stronger and you have also been talking about this for ages.” This part was genuine; I wanted him to go as much as I wanted me to go and over our university years we both had put the academic work into being prepared to do the job well.
A few days later in the middle of a class a familiar head poked into our classroom, scanned and caught my eyes. He motioned to me to join him. I slid out and asked him what was up. He asked where my friend – the other applicant – was. “Library” I said. “After class go get him and meet me in my office.”
And I did just that. Nervous, but excited, I finished class and sprinted to the library where I caught my friend as he was leaving. Together we sprinted to the glacier office, as we then had started calling it, and knocked.
Ever the casual and unceremonious academic, he opened the door, looked at us and smirked. “What?” he said aloud – not asking, just saying. “You wanted to meet with us?” I said. He looked at us again, paused, and said the sentence that still rings in my head: “I decided.”
“Funding. It came in today. There is enough for two assistants, which is good because we have extra work this year and I need you both.”
***
Months later I was standing on a glacier, drilling ice and measuring snow and hiking moraines and walking with arctic foxes, hares, and wolves. For five weeks the three of us hiked glaciers and measured melt, snow compaction and depth, and I got to feel what it was like to be a real scientist. It changed me more than I imagined it would; I was decided, I was going to be a glaciologist.
Until I met Taiwan. Taiwan changed everything…
Chapter 2
After my month and a half in the Arctic a lot of life happened. I graduated, I got a teaching degree, I taught high school geography, I applied to a master’s program in glaciology. I didn't get in.
And, I took trip to Taiwan.
And a lot of life happened there, too. I worked, I hiked, I explored. I had discovered a place that seemed to fit, and it had so much to offer – I hoped that I had at least a piece of me to offer it, too. After a few years of wavering I realized Taiwan was home.
One wet day in northern Taiwan, Ping-Xi to be exact, I was hiking and trading water with the forest – me dripping small lakes worth of salty sweat to the forest soil and the understory leaves splashing me with what they had held on to from the morning rain. I saw a little river, mostly dry but somewhat wet, carving through the understory thicket of leaves and branches and ferns and spindly things that clung to my clothes and skin in uncaring ways. I followed it up a hill. It eventually connected to another stream, and I followed it, too. Then I went a bit left, away from the water, then a bit more up and more left or, I am not sure. I got quite lost. (spoiler: I eventually made it) I scrambled onto a little rocky ledge and took a (wet) seat. I rested and watched the forest. I watched the still forest being swayed by wind; I watched the swaying forest flicker and flutter with wings of butterflies and birds; I watched the flickering swaying forest sing with croaks and whistles and frogs. A muntjac coughed in the distance. A snake hung on a branch. A flower stood brightly against its wooden pedicel-branch, thrust it into sunlight that had creaked its way through the canopy above. I watched the forest come alive and felt a change inside me. I was melting.
Thickened with life which I would later know by name – Troides, Idea, Megalamia, Racophorus, Alocasia – I was stunned at just how much of everything there was. This was the moment I switched from hiker to ecological explorer; I didn't just want to be in the forest, or climb to the peaks, I wanted to know the forest and understand what was growing on the peaks. I had so many questions bursting out of this newfound existance. Over the following months I became obsessed with plants – leaves and flowers and pollinators and bark and lianas and vine and thorn types and …. – and in time I moulted, shedding dreams of adventurous peaks for adventurous plants. I became a plant person. I hiked less, botanized more (though I must admit - happily - good botanizing does require good hiking most of the time!).
I would go on excursions to find certain plants, and I would return to places with a dedication I had not felt before to see how things changed throughout the years. I would care not for making a summit when there were botanical delights along the way. I would explore to learn, not just to do. And I leaned a lot.
Something curious comes to mind when I think back to this time. The arctic was (not literally, but … ) empty and open. Wide flat topography punctuated by a few mountains here and there and a few critters now and then, the Arctic defines space. With its crammed corners and hills overflowing with greenery of herbs and ferns and trees and lianas and vines, caked with yellow, red, purple, orange, white flowers and roots exposed and tangling amongst rocks, in the tropical forests of Taiwan there was no space. Again, not literally. But in the Arctic I felt claustrophobic with all the space and the silence; in the plant-saturated, muddy-hilled, fluttering and calling and whistling and swaying forests of Taiwan I felt released. Free and curious. Alive.
Taiwan had made me a plant ecologist at heart. But was that enough?
In time I would enroll in a master’s degree program studying tropical forest ecology, my own thesis examining fig tree reproductive ecology in southern Taiwan. From there I would embark on various avenues. Teaching, working with an educational non-profit, and running ecology camps for international school groups kept my love for teaching and education aflame. Working as a field research ecologist throughout Taiwan and in some lucky occasions Malaysia allowed me to push further and dig deeper and keep botanizing as a job. Recently I have become more involved in writing, as well as translating and editing, allowing me to combine education and exploration.
My love for glaciers never melted nor calved as they are want to do in even the calmest of arctic summers, let alone a pulsing tropical sun; rather my love for the living took root and grew, racing to that same sun, and saturated my mind’s curiosity. The glaciers are still there, so too are every nook of the natural world; nature fascinates me, but nothing more than the plants that have evolved on this rocky home of ours.
***
Under an immense Arctic blue-sky, standing in below-freezing air in my crampon-clad boots on the 15-kilometer-long White Glacier of Axel Heiberg Island, I told myself that this was the moment my dreams were both fulfilled and ignited. I remember I was eating an orange when I declared this to myself, something our professor kept telling us to savour because “twenty years ago when I first came we had no fruit” … . I knew I was going to be a glaciologist. I guess I failed. But if I did it was a beautiful failure and one that makes me happy, and keeps me curious, every single day.
I sometimes tell people that I am a glaciologist who studies and obsesses over plants. Nobody gets it except me.
And now you, too.
After my month and a half in the Arctic a lot of life happened. I graduated, I got a teaching degree, I taught high school geography, I applied to a master’s program in glaciology. I didn't get in.
And, I took trip to Taiwan.
And a lot of life happened there, too. I worked, I hiked, I explored. I had discovered a place that seemed to fit, and it had so much to offer – I hoped that I had at least a piece of me to offer it, too. After a few years of wavering I realized Taiwan was home.
One wet day in northern Taiwan, Ping-Xi to be exact, I was hiking and trading water with the forest – me dripping small lakes worth of salty sweat to the forest soil and the understory leaves splashing me with what they had held on to from the morning rain. I saw a little river, mostly dry but somewhat wet, carving through the understory thicket of leaves and branches and ferns and spindly things that clung to my clothes and skin in uncaring ways. I followed it up a hill. It eventually connected to another stream, and I followed it, too. Then I went a bit left, away from the water, then a bit more up and more left or, I am not sure. I got quite lost. (spoiler: I eventually made it) I scrambled onto a little rocky ledge and took a (wet) seat. I rested and watched the forest. I watched the still forest being swayed by wind; I watched the swaying forest flicker and flutter with wings of butterflies and birds; I watched the flickering swaying forest sing with croaks and whistles and frogs. A muntjac coughed in the distance. A snake hung on a branch. A flower stood brightly against its wooden pedicel-branch, thrust it into sunlight that had creaked its way through the canopy above. I watched the forest come alive and felt a change inside me. I was melting.
Thickened with life which I would later know by name – Troides, Idea, Megalamia, Racophorus, Alocasia – I was stunned at just how much of everything there was. This was the moment I switched from hiker to ecological explorer; I didn't just want to be in the forest, or climb to the peaks, I wanted to know the forest and understand what was growing on the peaks. I had so many questions bursting out of this newfound existance. Over the following months I became obsessed with plants – leaves and flowers and pollinators and bark and lianas and vine and thorn types and …. – and in time I moulted, shedding dreams of adventurous peaks for adventurous plants. I became a plant person. I hiked less, botanized more (though I must admit - happily - good botanizing does require good hiking most of the time!).
I would go on excursions to find certain plants, and I would return to places with a dedication I had not felt before to see how things changed throughout the years. I would care not for making a summit when there were botanical delights along the way. I would explore to learn, not just to do. And I leaned a lot.
Something curious comes to mind when I think back to this time. The arctic was (not literally, but … ) empty and open. Wide flat topography punctuated by a few mountains here and there and a few critters now and then, the Arctic defines space. With its crammed corners and hills overflowing with greenery of herbs and ferns and trees and lianas and vines, caked with yellow, red, purple, orange, white flowers and roots exposed and tangling amongst rocks, in the tropical forests of Taiwan there was no space. Again, not literally. But in the Arctic I felt claustrophobic with all the space and the silence; in the plant-saturated, muddy-hilled, fluttering and calling and whistling and swaying forests of Taiwan I felt released. Free and curious. Alive.
Taiwan had made me a plant ecologist at heart. But was that enough?
In time I would enroll in a master’s degree program studying tropical forest ecology, my own thesis examining fig tree reproductive ecology in southern Taiwan. From there I would embark on various avenues. Teaching, working with an educational non-profit, and running ecology camps for international school groups kept my love for teaching and education aflame. Working as a field research ecologist throughout Taiwan and in some lucky occasions Malaysia allowed me to push further and dig deeper and keep botanizing as a job. Recently I have become more involved in writing, as well as translating and editing, allowing me to combine education and exploration.
My love for glaciers never melted nor calved as they are want to do in even the calmest of arctic summers, let alone a pulsing tropical sun; rather my love for the living took root and grew, racing to that same sun, and saturated my mind’s curiosity. The glaciers are still there, so too are every nook of the natural world; nature fascinates me, but nothing more than the plants that have evolved on this rocky home of ours.
***
Under an immense Arctic blue-sky, standing in below-freezing air in my crampon-clad boots on the 15-kilometer-long White Glacier of Axel Heiberg Island, I told myself that this was the moment my dreams were both fulfilled and ignited. I remember I was eating an orange when I declared this to myself, something our professor kept telling us to savour because “twenty years ago when I first came we had no fruit” … . I knew I was going to be a glaciologist. I guess I failed. But if I did it was a beautiful failure and one that makes me happy, and keeps me curious, every single day.
I sometimes tell people that I am a glaciologist who studies and obsesses over plants. Nobody gets it except me.
And now you, too.