Olive Dunn is a senior at Northern Arizona University studying environmental and sustainability studies. She currently serves as the Green Fund Co-Chair, and will graduate this spring. She also helped found Fossil Free NAU, a club dedicated to divestment efforts for NAU. Divestment is the act of an entity removing their investments from fossil fuel industries. The club also focuses on engaging students in sustainable lifestyles.
However, before she was in college, Olive says her mom helped her connect with nature a lot. They would go out into the woods as a family and make nature journals where they drew or wrote what they saw. She even says they would sometimes press a plant in their books, take it home, and try to identify it. Through this, she learned how ecosystems work and how to identify organisms.
“My whole life I’ve loved nature and had a really big connection with it.” Olive said.
When Olive was a senior in high school, Covid put her life on pause. She felt like there wasn’t a lot to do, so she started to explore the woods of Prescott where she lived. She went out to the woods every day in the spring, which she says is one of the most beautiful times of the year in the Hassayampa River. She would park near a stream and walk up and down the stream for miles every day, by herself, without her phone where she could be completely alone.
“I think by spending so much time out in nature, I got to know it so well it became like my friend and my therapy and my safe place.” Olive said.
Olive says she observed various pieces of nature out in the woods, like patches of moss, lichen or even frogs. She enjoyed watching them and noticing the similarities between herself, her body, and nature.
One day, when she was treading through the woods, she came across some Mexican axolotls. She was amazed at what a cool discovery she had stumbled upon, and would often return to the area to see them again.
However, Olive also found out through some climate activists she knew that the stretch of the river she often returned to and felt to be a safe place was about to be mined for its natural resources. She immediately felt how unfair it would be to the endangered species and beautiful ecosystems to mine that river.
So, she talked to people who worked with the state council to express her concerns about mining the area. After a council meeting, she found out that the mining had been brought to a halt, at least temporarily.
“It’s probably because I was able to build that relationship with nature and advocate for it.” Olive said.
Olive says this experience, in part, contributed to her deciding to major in environmental and sustainability studies at NAU. Olive feels that anyone can connect with nature, no matter how or when.
“It’s not too late to build a relationship with nature… it can be whatever you want it to be. It doesn’t have to follow any sort of code.”