dewey

I am a teacher. An anthropologist, an environmentalist, an artist. A yogi, friend, and fellow earthling. I am an eater of plants and lover of books. A self-proclaimed stoic optimist, amateur film photographer and writer. I am an intentional living and sustainability advocate who believes our world is in need of a shift.

For the past few years I have called the quirky city of New Orleans home, but I was raised with sand on my feet and the sun on my skin in Tampa, Florida. When I was a much younger tomboy with messy blonde ringlets, I spent my summers in the adirondack mountains, where I learned how to build a fire, work as a farmhand, and live in connection with the wilderness around me.

In 2015 I graduated with two degrees from Florida State University, one in Anthropology and the other in Interdisciplinary Humanities. I purposefully rooted my undergraduate studies in both cognitive and geographic exploration. On the road and inside my head, it was never answers that I found, only more questions. Regardless, being able to view the world through an anthropological lens is the greatest of many gifts that my undergraduate education gave to me.

After graduation, I uprooted pretty much everything concrete in my life and threw myself into the great big mystery of the world that lay beyond the horizon of my hometown. Throughout that time I have had the opportunity to explore, live, and volunteer in over forty countries. I have lifted up the corners of far away places and whether I was studying in London, excavating archaeological sites in Spain and Dubai, teaching geometry in Thailand, developing humanitarian aid projects in Tanzania, running an outdoor recreation program in Ontario, living in a van traveling around my home country, or planting roots and working with the youth of New Orleans, the question of sustainability within the context of each of these societies persisted.

My partner Matthew and I have centered our life and partnership together around reducing our impact, living in deep community/connection, and rethinking larger systems we are complicit in. We have sought out Rancho because we hope to go deeper and eventually create a similar corner of the universe where we can learn and teach and grow with others. In the learning and unlearning I have done throughout my life, I have found that once you understand that the rules aren’t absolute you can learn to live beyond the limits. And that is what I intend to create throughout my time and work at the ranch: jotting down a few answers, discovering even more questions, and developing a better understanding of a life beyond the limits.