It doesn’t happen overnight; it’s the weekly accumulation of restless urges and whispered nudges that culminate into the moments of life clarity. Since college graduation, I’d spent the next eight years working for one company on autopilot.  At 28, I was only one looming step away from Associate Designer to Design Principal. Yet, as I peered behind the curtain of my future, I saw more travel, responsibility, stress, and longer days than the 60-plus-hour weeks I was already putting in.  I felt a gnawing sense that my true passion lived elsewhere.  But, I needed to step off the hamster wheel for a minute to figure that out.

I’d long grown weary of the endless concrete and billboards, the heat and humidity, and a city culture obsessed with eating, shopping, and socializing.  I craved a better quality of life; one where I could safely cross the street without getting hit by a bus; where I didn’t have to drive ten miles to ride my bicycle. I wanted to taste a farm-fresh tomato, swim in a natural lake, hike a few miles from home, and be around other environmentally-minded people. Houston no longer fit who I was and the growing pains were real. 

In 2007 I was invited to speak as an ‘Emerging Professional’ at the American Society of Landscape Architecture (ASLA) conference in Minneapolis.  I sat in on a talk by the founder of Biohabitats.  He presented a slideshow of his company’s work; lush vegetated walls, vermillion green roofs, and constructed wetlands using native plants to filter greywater.  The gardens looked wild, alive, and on the edge of unruly. It was here that I first heard the term ‘restoration ecology.” A seed of curiosity was planted.

Over the next year, that seed took root.  I remember spending a spring afternoon with my best friend, Amanda, at the Ima Hogg Mansion along Houston’s Buffalo Bayou, wandering through the manicured gardens edged by azalea bushes in full fuchsia bloom.  We sat on the lawn by the reflecting pond, and I told her of my desire to learn more about this new interest. I couldn’t give a damn about picking out the perfect site furnishing for the new shopping development; I was interested in learning about prairies and wetlands.

“Should I quit my secure job and go to graduate school” I wondered?

During a hot-springs hopping road trip through the Southwest, I had my epiphany.  My boyfriend and I rolled in late to the Gila Wilderness campground in southwestern New Mexico and cooked up a headlamp dinner on the tailgate of his pickup truck.  It was a beautiful clear night in the desert, and while waiting for the steaks to grill, we watched the most brilliant shooting star blaze a slow sparkling path across the black sky.  The sight was so spectacular it sent a murmur of wonder through the campground; and an electric charge down my body.

The following day, we woke early to explore the Native American cliff dwelling ruins and stopped at the Visitors Center before hitting the road.  I picked up a book that would change the course of my life, A Fierce Green Fire, a biography of Aldo Leopold. The book introduces his life’s contributions and his environmental ethic of living harmoniously with the land.  Leopold was responsible for establishing our nation’s first Wilderness Areas—the Gila was first in 1924—and spent his early years in the Southwest as a ranger. He married his sweetheart from Santa Fe before returning to his Midwestern roots in Madison, WI where he chaired the nation’s first graduate program in Game Management (now Wildlife Ecology) at the University of Wisconsin (UW).

Through the pages, I found the mentor and inspiration I was looking for; his call for an ecological conscience resonated deeply. Once home, I researched more about Leopold and the modern-day UW, and learned that the University still has a strong restoration ecology curriculum housed in the Landscape Architecture department. As a bonus, the campus sits on a natural glacial lake, with sailboats, farmers markets, bike paths, and four full glorious seasons!

Could this be where my heart was trying to lead me all along?

Some people are born knowing what they want to do or be, but for some of us our life passions and interests are manifold, constantly unfolding and evolving. Perhaps we are on the leading edge of blazing a whole new vocation. All I know is that on my own meandering path through this life I’ve held onto one guiding principal: to follow your curiosity; listen to the whispers of your heart; and take a flaming shooting star in the desert as a signpost that your life is about to change in a big beautiful way.