Birding to Change the World: Warner Park, Wetlands, and Social Justice

Welcome to another episode of the Outdoor Adventure Series! Today, we're chatting with Dr. Trish O'Kane, an environmental educator, action researcher, and author of the inspiring memoir, Birding to Change the World. Trish shares her remarkable journey—from investigative journalism and human rights work in Central America and Alabama, to finding a new path in environmental education after Hurricane Katrina, and discovering the healing power of birds and nature.

You'll hear how Trish connects birding, environmental justice, and social activism, and how her passion grew into teaching programs that pair college students with elementary school children for outdoor adventures and nature exploration. She opens up about the challenges of our world today, the importance of fostering hope, and the profound impact that spending time in nature can have on both kids and adults.

DISCUSSION

00:00 "Outdoor Adventures with Trish O'Kane"

05:39 Journalism, Justice, and Human Rights

09:25 Connections Across Places and Journeys

12:32 "Kids, Birds, Planet-Saving Program"

16:56 "Hope Amidst Harsh Realities"

20:35 "Thanksgiving Tragedy in Vermont"

21:20 "Kids' Cards of Hope"

28:58 "Finding Home After Katrina."

31:43 "Finding Healing in Nature."

34:35 "Birding Guide Inspired by Book."

39:29 "Reflecting on Career Inspirations."

40:57 Park, Kids, Solutions & Change

49:06 "Birding Tales & Life Change."

LEARN MORE

To learn more about Trish and her work, and download your copy of the Art of Flocking Action Guide, visit her website at https://trishokane.org/.

NEXT STEPS

Visit us at https://outdooradventureseries.com to like, comment, and share our episodes.

KEYWORDS

Trish O'Kane, Birding to Change the World, Wild Warner Park, Madison Wisconsin, Destination Madison, Howard Fox, Outdoor Adventure Series, Podcast Interview

#TrishOKane #BirdingtoChangetheWorld #WildWarnerPark #madisonwisconsin #destinationmadison #HowardFox #OutdoorAdventureSeries #PodcastInterview

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello everyone and welcome back for another episode of the Outdoor Adventure Series. This is your host, Howard Fox, and I am here. I'm going to do that one more time. Three, two, one. Hello, everyone. This is Howard Fox and welcome back for another episode of the Outdoor Adventure Series, the podcast that celebrates individuals and families, businesses and organizations that seek out and promote the exploration, stewardship, conservation, access, and enjoyment of the outdoors. Dr. Trish O'Kain is our guest today. Trish is an environmental educator who uses action research to promote environmental and social justice. She is also the author of Birding to Change the World, an uplifting memoir that explores what birds can teach us about life. Trish is also senior lecturer at the University of Vermont. And I am just, Trish, so excited to have you on the podcast. This is it's been very enjoyable, I should say, preparing for this episode today. So thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Thank you so much, Howard. It's an honor to speak with you. And I admire what you do. Thanks for helping the feathered cause or the outdoor cause.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

And we are certainly, I appreciate that. And we are certainly going to talk about it. Now I do have to also uh acknowledge a, well, a couple of folks, uh, Phil and Susan Hertell from the Red Cliffs Audubon, because uh Phil, uh Susan introduced me to you as somebody I might want to have on the podcast. So give a shout out to them and we'll provide backlinks uh for our listeners to that episode with Phil. You were in uh up in Utah a couple years ago for Birdfest. And uh so acknowledgement to them. And then one more acknowledgement is to my friend Emily. She's with the Outdoor Writers Association of America. Trish, I saved drinking out of this cup until you and I had were on this podcast together. So I want you to know that this is special, okay? And um hopefully I will not make a mess. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

I love it. I'm jealous of Howard. That is a really cool mug.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

I can see if Emily has her other two, and I'll just put you guys in touch with each other. But uh I every morning, if I can, I sit outside with a cup of coffee, a good cup of coffee. It's usually in a glass mug because I always tell people I want to see good coffee. But I love just sitting out there waiting for the birds to arrive or just listening to them. So every day getting ready for this interview, I'm out there reading a chapter, enjoying a cup of coffee. So I'm gonna take a sip.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

I love that cardinal. That's one of the stars of my book. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

I I am in love with the cardinal, and we're gonna talk more about that too. But first off, um, Trish, where are you located? Sure, please share that with our audience.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

So I'm talking to you from Burlington, Vermont. And right now we've got about six inches of very hard-packed, icy, frozen snow on the ground. We had a had a pretty rough winter, but beautiful. But the parking lots are like ice, like hawk ice hockey rinks. You can't even walk across them. It's it's I was out birding this morning. You have to be so careful where you walk. But yeah, I've been in Burlington about 10 years, and I actually live in Senator Bernie Sanders' neighborhood. He goes to a grocery store and his daughter owns the local pub. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

That's a wonderful neighborhood. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

That is sweet. So you do you literally get up every morning and go birding and just sit and listen, a little slow birding to take in the neighborhood?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Unfortunately, Howard, not lately, but usually that's what I do. Like you with you, I love to sit with that cup of coffee outside, or we have a screen porch when it's really cold. Like below 20, really, I don't like sitting outside. Above 20, I do sit outside um and start my day with the the avian news, right? Instead of the usual news. But lately I it's been so cold, number one, um, that it's been hard to do that. So now, but now I'm starting to do it.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Okay, very good. Now I would love if we could provide a little context to your background, and there's so many connections, by the way, and I'll mention those as we go along. So I feel like this was destined to have this podcast with you. Tell us if you would. You've you have a journalism background and really some important work, and heaven knows we need some of that work today. But if you would, for our listeners, share a little bit about your background.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Thank you, Howard, for that comment. Well, I think when you get to a certain age, maybe you've had two or three lives, and I feel lucky to be kind of one of those people. So my first professional career was as a uh human rights investigative journalist. So I studied, I'm from Southern California. My parents are both from Ireland, Northern Ireland. They're they are up in that great Irish dance floor in the sky. Now they're not around anymore, but they they emigrated from Ireland and I was raised in California. And then I went to school in Los Angeles, became a journalist, and moved to Central America, where I worked for 10 years. That was in the 80s and 90s. I worked for the United Nations part of the time, investigating massacres in Guatemala perpetrated by the Guatemalan military, which we trained and financed. So it was, I was there during the period when people just were just were beginning to get over their fear enough to acknowledge that their loved ones were buried in mass graves. And so I was there when people began exhuming the graves. So I did that for 10 years, and then I moved to Alabama, Montgomery, Alabama, to work at the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate crimes researcher. So that's I did all that for almost 20 years. It was wonderful work, really inspiring. But after a while, I started to get burned out because I was always focusing on kind of the ugliest things humanity had done. And I didn't really know how to change my career or what direction to go. But then I moved to New Orleans to teach journalism at Loyola University. And a month later, literally, that's the story in the book. A month later, Hurricane Katrina gave me a new life in a new direction. It wasn't fun or pretty. A lot of people died. My neighborhood was totally destroyed. My home was had to be bulldozed. It was very rough for about three years. But in the middle of all that, I found the birds and and started on a new path. But but I always I've never separated, I mean, Katrina forced me to see that you can't separate environmental issues from social justice and racism, economics, and and just unfairness. And because of my background in human rights, though those two, those things are inseparable to me. So I've been very lucky in my work and teaching to be able to combine them. And that's what the book is about, too. So yeah, so I really I come from a human rights and social science background and then went back to school and got a PhD in environmental science and studied ornithology. And everybody who's listening, if well, the birders who were listening know what happens when you start studying birds, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Right. It's just of course.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

And your life changes completely.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Life is changes in but you you become an expert in a very uh, especially when you get getting your PhD, you become an expert of something very uh small, but so very important because you never know the impact it's gonna have. And by the way, the the photo behind me is not lost of where you got your PhD from.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

No, no, and yeah, the university is just a little bit more to the right of your head, down there on the lake. Gorgeous place. That's where, yeah, that's where I got my PhD. And if you're looking for a good grad school, wow, first class. I just loved I loved every minute of my eight-year PhD program. Started it at 44 years old.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

That was not easy, but it sure was fun.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Better late than never, and also it when a pet when that passion gets flame gets ignited, you never know where it's gonna take you. And I I do want to give you a shout out to Montgomery, Alabama. I lived there for a year.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Yeah. When year was that, Howard?

SPEAKER_00 9:08

I was there uh 8990. Stayed there for a year, then I moved to Chicago. And I remember go driving to Selma and the the the uh the Pettus Bridge and Yes, the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Edmund Pettus Bridge. I was and it was just a fascinating place. But then the company I work for doesn't keep you in one place at the time, so ended up in Chicago, which is a stone's throw from Madison. What a wonderful place. And uh the Outdoor Writers Association of America, that happens to be where our annual conference is this year in August. And I am I may have to change my itinerary a little bit because I want to go up to Warner Park, which we'll talk more about in a second. I I just that's why I I I felt I needed to make these connections because you can't as a coach, we a lot of what we do with our clients is uh some of it's on instinct, some of it uh is insight in a way. And I like to make connections, but it was not lost on me of reading this book this week, my coffee cup, your some of your journey. It's like, wow, this is this is pretty cool stuff because it's I love asking questions and learning about my guests, but there is a there was a lot of little uh six degrees of separation there, maybe not you know, fully threaded, but they were there.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Howard, if you're gonna go to Warner Park, let me know ahead of time. And I will try to get someone from Wild Warner, one of my comrades here in the book that helped help us together. We saved a wetland, a birding wetland there. That's you know how the story ends. But if they could take you on a tour and walk you through Warner Park, because you're it just looks like it's a beautiful, beautiful place, but there aren't signs that say this is where we fought this, but you know what I'm saying? It's just a city park. But one of these people who and they're still in the fight, they're incredible, they're still helping the park, planting trees, taking care of things, testifying at public meetings. The place is more beautiful than when I left.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Wow, that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

So you would like to be the Wild Warner is the name of the group. My husband and I founded in our house.

unknown 11:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

I would love to take you up on that. And even if I have to step away from the conference for a little bit, because I think it's it's too important not to do it, just given the connection now. Uh, I want to just touch on one more thing before we do spend more time on the book and the field guide. Given your background and just I wish kids were out in the parks watching birds every day, as opposed to picking up a smartphone and playing a game. And I think of all the damage we've done as as humanity and the tragedies that are going on literally, as you and I have this wonderful conversation. And but this has to be, I mean, your love for the birds and the helping people become citizen scientists and being aware of their surroundings and the activism, but this has to be painful for you just given your human rights uh background and just what's going on in the world right now.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Thank you for asking and acknowledging that, um, Howard, because uh I think it's I just I have to say something, right? And I I think because part of the problem, I think, is it's also horrifying. So we don't we don't want to talk about it, but I I have to acknowledge it. Um so yeah, we'll talk more about it because of the book, but I ended up starting um an environmental program for kids in my neighborhood in Madison, right behind there, where where you're the photo you've got up. And the kids there, they were in middle school, so they were seventh and eighth grade. I taught a class at the college while I was a graduate student in the University of Wisconsin, and it was called Last Child in the Park, How Kids and Birds Can Save the Planet. So that was the first class I taught, and it paired college students, my students, with kids who lived around Warner Park in my neighborhood, one-on-one for a whole semester. And the relationships got so tight. And when I finished my degree, University of Vermont hired me to replicate that program here. And here it's called Birding to Change the World, you know, the name of the book. And it's the exact same program, um, except instead of going, we don't have a Warner Park here, but we have a lot of wonderful places to bird. And so I work with my local elementary school that's literally like a three-minute walk from my house, uh, Flynn Elementary, with fourth and fifth graders. And every Wednesday I take my college students, 25 of them. They're trained, they have to read environmental justice, they have to learn a lot about birds, they have to learn about child development, all kinds of the class is a mix of a lot of things. But every Wednesday afternoon, we go to Flynn Elementary School, and they each one of them is paired with a child, and we walk or run three miles to a wetland site similar to where we worked in Warner Park. It's called Durway. And the kids run and play and climb trees and do all kinds of amazing things and watch the animals for three hours every Wednesday afternoon. No phones allowed, right? So you asked about what's happening right now and how I feel. I I just I'm so horrified and sad because I work with fourth and fifth graders.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

And so I when I heard saw and started reading about the massacre, the bombing of the school in Minab, Iran, it's an element. I started reading about it. I couldn't stop myself. And also, it's the human rights investigator. I want to know who did it, how many died, why, what happened, right? And so I've been for that's all I've been doing. That's why I haven't been birding for the last several days, just reading world newspapers, The Guardian, especially in the New York Times, and looking at human rights organizations' reports. So, yeah, the U.S. military is still investigating, but uh defense secretary Peter Heggseth in his press conference two days ago didn't deny it. I mean, because it's under investigation. So the U.S. has not said we didn't do it. We probably did it. In fact, the Guardian's reporting right now that it was the U.S., it was us. It was us. Because the school is was right next to a naval, um, Iranian naval base or revolutionary guard base. I don't know if it still is a base or not. It it was. It's possible that the US and the Israeli forces thought it still was a working base, and they ended up bombing the school next door. And like 175 people are dead. I just looked at the list this morning that's been published by Middle East Eye, which is an independent journalism outlet run by David Hearst, who used to be with The Guardian, and he's a veteran journalist, three decades. Belfast, Russia, Europe. You should look up Middle East Eye. And he has he's put he has just published a list of 60 or so of the kids, their names, their ages, and their photographs. I was also gonna cancel my appointment with you because I just thought that's soul crushing emotionally. And a two-month-old baby because the bombings happened several times and parents came in to try to get the kids out, and then another missile hit. So some of the parents had younger children with them.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

I was gonna ask you with the book, and uh in the spirit of full disclosure, I'm like three-quarters of the way through it or two-thirds of the way through, but I'm gonna finish it this weekend. I know. And uh you've heard it here. I'm committing, I'm committing.

unknown 17:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

I I my sense is where you are going, because this being your memoir and the work that is be was being done uh in the stories that you were sharing in the book. I was gonna ask you if you had hope. I I have asked that question before to some of our guests, and I think we confirm, yes, I do, but sometimes the reality of what's around us really gives us cause to reflect that. And I'm curious, I mean again, what what we're hearing right now and seeing, as you've just described, is horrific. Was there a glimmer of hope coming, say, out of this book, or when you're when you're with those kids, when your grad students are with those kids out in the park once a week, and you see a kid's light up, perhaps somebody who's maybe their parents, I mean, maybe culturally doing some of this was not didn't make sense. But do you see hope? Did you have hope coming out of the book? Do you see hope just watching the kids' eyes light up when they find something with the with your students?

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Yes, yes, Howard. I think it's important to take time to grieve and acknowledge, and Katrina taught me that, right? And so, yeah, the book talks about Katrina, how devastating it is, but then how I how do I come out of it? The birds help me, but the children also help me, right? That's why the massacre hurts so badly because you see the faces of those kids. There are some days I I feel just devastated and think, where are we headed as a species? But then when I go to the school, well, well, first of all, when I'm with my college students, I mean they're 20, 21 years old. And how can I, how can we give up? I we cannot give up. It's just not happening, right? So I feel a moral duty. And also when I'm with them, they give me courage and they their enthusiasm and optimism. And then when we I take them to meet the little kids, and I see all that love between the tiny little kids and the college students. Because as soon as we walk into that school, the kids start screaming, the college students are here, the our mentors, our mentors. They they just go crazy over the college students. They think they're the coolest thing ever, right? So I see so much love multiplying. And I'll just tell you a real quick story: the hope thing. This is it's related to what's happening now. You just never know what impact bringing people together has. So some of the kids are pretty squirrely, right? Especially the fifth grade boys, they can be quite rumbunctious. We had a couple of years ago, we had a really wild group of little boys. They they were out of control all the time. But, you know, that's what they're supposed to do. That same month, or was it in November, we had a horrific hate crime here in Burlington. You probably heard it on the news. Some deranged person shot three Palestinian students on the edge of our campus.

unknown 20:29

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Just because one of them was wearing a scarf. Now, these are Palestinian students who live in Vermont. And actually, they'd come to Vermont, two of them from Brown University, for a Thanksgiving dinner with their family. And they were coming out of their grandmother's or somebody's apartment, and this guy just shot them. What they two of them all survived, thank God, but one is paralyzed for life. And they were in the hospital here. And a Burlington's tiny, right? So the kids saw this on the news, and we had to go to the school the next day to work with the kids. And so I'm thinking, we don't we don't ignore this stuff. The kids are from all over, some of them are from refugee families from war zone. And I said to my students, we're gonna acknowledge what has happened and just tell them and how sad we are today. So we got to the school and I made my little speech about how sad we were. And the kids were well, we want to do something. What can we do to help those poor boys in the hospital? And the kids love to draw, and they one kid's like, Well, what if we just draw birds and we make cards or something? So, I mean, here's these squirrely wild kids in this school gym. They sat for like half an hour. Everybody got coloring pens, the school helped us, and they made a gorgeous set of cards, handmade cards. I'm probably gonna cry telling you this. I went to the hospital and delivered these to the hospital. And the kids were making their college students, because they're not allowed to use the phones, look up on the phone, on the internet. How to say in Arabic, hope you get better fast, or whatever. The kids were writing stuff in Arabic on these cards. So I took them and delivered them to the hospital. And just a few months ago, two years later, I got a letter from the grandmother of the boy who is paralyzed, thanking me and telling me. First, she apologized. She said, I'm really sorry it's taken me so long to write. But we've had a lot going on with my family. But I want you to know how much those children's cards meant to my grandson.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

It dawns on me that children. I'm not first off, I'm not married. I have no kids. I have nieces and nephews. Don't see them as much as I would like. However, kids are very malleable. They're like sponges. They take in everything. Which is why certain things that happen when I involved in my coaching practice, a lot of stems from how they were treated by an instructor, a parent, a sibling, the community. And it shows up in some of the coaching work that we do, which is not therapy. I just want to put a caveat out there. I am an ICF certified coach. And it but it dawns on me that the more we can bring people together, kids together, involved in burning in the community, involved in preparing a shared meal, which I'm a big believer of breaking bread and bring and learning about other cultures. Which is why Chicago was so great, because we had meetups literally every week where we're cooking something new. And that is so needed out in the wherever we live today is to take kids, give them nature, and it's not lost on me. There's a and it's it's written about in your book. In fact, one of the earlier chapters, Ehrlich, or I think Ehrlich, um, did the study on the connection between nature and mental health and wellness.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Oh, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Huge connection.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Yes. And healing, right? Even looking outside a window of a hospital that you heal faster if you see something green. Yeah, it was Ehrlich. That was a that spawned a hundred more studies about the healing power of nature. Like less you need less medication, your sutures heal faster, you don't get infections. I mean, it's just it's all been quantitatively verified.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Yeah. So I did again, this is not about me, this is about you today, but we're just like all these little light bulbs are going off of my head. So this I interviewed these guys, outdoor coaching, uh, Pass Moore and Ellie Lloyd Jones, and this idea just being outside. I mean, they're developing a coaching practice where the nature is part is literally one of the the co-facilitators of the coaching up coaching engagement.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

But but I could and I could see that in the work that you're doing in from the book, is and especially with these kids, is get out there, slow down, put your, like you said, you put your your phones in your pocket and touch them again for an hour or two, and sit, listen, smell, observe. And it's just so important. We have to keep doing that.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

Yeah. Oh, one other detail I wanted to tell you about. Some of the kids that made the cards, they had their student, their college mentor, look up birds of the Middle East. And so they drew birds, beautiful birds from Gaza and Israel and the different thinking that oh, those boys will know those birds and that will comfort them, you know. So yeah, I think you should add to your coaching, they should add to their outdoor coaching. Yeah, nature definitely is a facilitator, but the animals, birds.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Well, and that's it, that's exactly the point is uh there's a uh Desert National Wildlife Refuge, which is like 15, 16 miles from me, the closest place I can get to to go and just walk around there. And there's a trail there called the Bird Song Trail. And if you sit at the base at the on the bench at the at the apex of the of this trail, huge number of trees, believe it or not, because it's fed by springs coming down from the mountains, and it's a wonderful birding location.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Oh, it sounds so magical. I love the desert.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

And I would love to just okay, it's it's hotter than Hades in July and August at this particular park, but there are other parks where you can get up early, just have that coaching conversation, but also use nature and observation and listening. Because that's a lot of the problems because we don't observe, we don't listen. So interesting. I told you there's a lot of connections here that were just wringing uh the light bulbs off uh in my head. Now I am curious, and I do want to uh in the spirit of time, I want to be respectful of your schedule. But I would love if we could. I'm gonna share my screen. I I wanna, well, first off, I want to show everybody where Warner Park was in Madison. And then I also then want to go to the action guide that accompanies your book if you're okay with that.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Oh, yes, thank you. I'd love for people to see the action guides. It's got lots of fun, weird stuff in there to do, especially if you if you have kids, if your listeners have kids or educators, use it. It's free. It's online. Everybody can take it and do what they want.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Excellent. Well, first off, just for everybody's morning piece of knowledge, uh, this is Madison, Wisconsin, stuck right in the middle of the state of Wisconsin. So I've been up to Milwaukee, been to Madison a couple of times, but I learned because I had interviewed the uh communications director from uh a visit, uh the Madison Destination Marketing Organization. And uh I I never realized that Madison was on this isthmuth surrounded by water. And so here's the downtown, this is where the state capital is, the university, but way up here is Warner Park, which for our listeners, this is part of a large part of Trisha's book took place here. So what was unique about Warner's Warner Park?

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Well, you can see there Warner Park, you see North Sherman Ave, and then if you go down Trailsway, which is right along the park.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

And if you take Trailsway and then you turn left on Monterey Drive, that's running right along the park. That's where we lived. So, first of all, Howard, the real estate agent, we had lost our home in Katrina. We were gonna move because I was getting the PhD and we needed a place to live. And you know, we had no money. I mean, we were bankrupt practically and using a FEMA loan to get for a down payment on another house. So the real estate agent showed us like, I don't know, 12 or 13 houses in Madison, and most of them we just couldn't afford. And then she took us to the was the second to the last one was this little house right on the edge of Warner Park. And we could afford it because the neighborhood, um, lower-income neighborhood, beautiful neighborhood, some public housing next to us, apartments, a mix, some condos, some homes. It was a real mix, which we loved immediately because we'd lived in Montgomery and New Orleans. And then we could afford the house. But the thing was, I remember walking into the house, I didn't know about the park and turning around and looking out the front window and going, Oh my god, look at that. Wow, we could live here and look at that all day long. Oh, yeah, I don't care about the house. We'll take this one. This is I was I was flabbergasted with this gorgeous pine um blue spruce. And I both my both my husband and I, I mean, we were so traumatized after Katrina and I had seen so much devastation, and I taught there afterwards. My whole, I don't know, my my soul just kind of said, Yes, this is what you need. Who cares about everything else? So it was just black. We didn't know about the park, we just needed a place that we could afford that wasn't too far from the university, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Well, and I love the story as you were describing in the book, as you as you slow, you know, day by day, you're recognizing not only hearing birds, seeing the birds, but you're recognizing the people who make part of the park a part of their daily routine.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Yeah, well, that's the thing. People, every people living around the park, a lot of people like we did, have dogs. So you'd walk your dog through the park, and that was probably the major way people used it. Um then the city used it for all kinds of events, and I talk about that in the book. That's where some of the conflicts start to come up over uses and over concrete concretization and how much do we build up the park or leave it green? But for the people living around it, like us, I realized a lot of people, a lot of people who were unemployed or retired, um, people on disability, that park was their medicine, it was their joy, it was their wilderness, it was everything. And I started meeting my neighbors and we started talking about the animals we were seeing. And many, many people, and I interview them and they're in the book. They taught me so much, but a lot of people like me at that time had mental health problems, right? Like I mean, I had PTSD after Katrina and because of Central America and all that. And so we started talking about well, I walk into the park and I start watching the fox, and I just I forget all of it, and I feel and and so we became all of us together. We were like addicted to this park. And so then when the park was under attack, it was like, oh no, oh my god, I'm gonna lose my medicine. And what about the fox and what'll happen to the birds? And and that's when we started to band together. So many of the people who banded together to protect the park, and that story's in the book, it was because we couldn't live without it, it was saving us.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

I I appreciated just the everybody's unique reason or why the park was so important to them, and the fact that you were able to get together and coalesce these folks that have very a varying interest in the one and this is where uh my reading ended. Uh, the the one of the commissioners, when you mentioned that one bird, the bit bittern.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Bittern, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

And now now see, I haven't yet, because I've been swamped. I saw the foot that by the way, the graphics in the book are wonderful, by the way. So I I saw the the the graph, the illustration of the bittern, but I haven't done my due diligence and gone out to do my Google search and find a uh this is what a well I have ecornell uh on my uh uh on my uh phone, so I need to like hear the Bittern. That's the best part about being outside here in Nevada, is this like I saw my first Verden this weekend. I had never seen one before. Yeah, just just one. But uh, I still haven't seen an owl out in the wild. I've seen them in a barn, which technically was the wild, but I still want to see an owl. Uh which is maybe I have and I just didn't know it. I don't know. Well, listen, I want to, if we could, hopefully technology works. You should be seeing your book, your the the guide, action guide.

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Yes, I can see it. I see it.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Excellent. Hang on one second. A little toolbar, of course, is in the way.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Do you want me to tell people what it is?

SPEAKER_00 34:20

Because they might yeah, let's talk about yeah, I would love if you would share about what this field guide is. I'm just gonna shrink it down just a little bit. Yeah, well, so what's the purpose purpose of this guide that now is accompanying the book?

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Right. So I had a lot of readers write to me or email me and and uh which I love, and it's just such an honor to get those emails. And and but I've had several people contact me and say, Well, I loved your book, and now I want to do I want to do what you did, or I want to do more, and how do I start? Or I'm a I don't know anything about birds, but now I want to be a birder. And I think there's a lot in the book that that that can help people do that, right? But then I started thinking about, well, I've been teaching now for so many years and I have so many cool games and activities and things my students have helped me think of. So what if I could share that with people and kind of design a guide? So the guide is organized to fit each chapter of the book. So for each chapter of the book, there's a chapter in the guide, just a couple of pages, that gives like I call it homing work instead of homework. So if you want to really connect to the your place, the place that you love, where you live, these are activities. Yes, are really simple stuff like just walking around or making maps, drawing things with your kids that you see, um, and then of course speaking out. But a lot of it's fun, crazy stuff, and a lot of bird dancing, because part of my teaching with college students and kids is to not just study the bird, but be the bird. And so kids love to dance and move and sing, and my students do. In fact, the midterm in my college class at the University of Vermont, it's a midterm dance jam. My students, my college students have to study a bird dance either live or online. They have to pair up with another student in the class, and so as partners, they learn the dance and they have to break it down, they have to turn in a sheet that explains how to do it. Again, they're learning how to teach, right? How do you explain to a kid how to do this dance? And then they have to perform it in a YouTube. And so I use these YouTube in my speeches, and and then we teach the dances to the kids and we dance in a circle, and so some of that stuff from the kids and the teaching is in the guide, so anybody can do it, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:46

I love it. Another part of the book that I really appreciated and is when you were talking, I have it up on uh page five of the guide, is this I this uh subject of murmuration. Yeah, I had never seen murmur. Well, actually, I've seen murmuration here, but not to the extent when as when I lived in the UK and you had the starlings.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

The UK's incredible. Oh my god, and it's just amazing that these they're they're all like in unison with each other. So there's a good dance for your students. Yes, murmuration dance.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Well, it's that is very it's like impossible to do. I the one I do with my students, and it's in here is just uh flying in V formation like the geese. So my students, I take them to a big field and they make a big V, and then we have to run around the field in a V. But the hard part is they have to switch off the leader because that's what the geese do, and that they keep switching off. Well, how do you switch off? How do you communicate? Well, the geese are up there flapping and honking. So my students have to figure out how are they going to keep running in a V and communicate who's gonna drop out and who's gonna go up. And that is really hard to do. And then they think, well, wow, these geese are really smart. Yeah, they are really, really smart. It's not easy to fly in V formation.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

No, no, very interesting. Well, I love I just love the idea of the book and the the field guide because an important topic that you're sharing the threads throughout the book, and then turning these into field guides. So this gives kids a way to get adults as well, a way to get outside, explore, slow down, and just observe and listen and just uh you never know what you're gonna see.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

No, and and it's also designed for anyone anywhere. You could be in a city, you could have a balcony, and you could put a bird feeder on the balcony, or you could start. There's lots of birds in cities. I mean, New York City is one of the best cities in the world for birding. So you don't have to live next to a Warner Park or a wilderness area to do. I was very intentional about that because nature's everywhere, the birds are everywhere, and I want anyone anywhere to be able to find this healing, right? This free medicine that's outside all around us, which is why we have to take care of it. Stop destroying.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

I love it. Free medicine, it's literally what it is, and it's it's there. I love it, I love it. Well, thank you for taking us through the field guide. I love the enemeration.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

And I think it's online, people.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

So it's I think I forget what we're gonna provide a backlink uh to uh your website in our show notes, and that also includes in the website included a link to download the book. So we'll we'll have that in the show notes. All right, I am gonna go back to uh just you and I having a conversation. So thank you for taking us through the book. This is a really I can imagine it would be a hard question to answer, but hey, you're I have no doubt you'll have something here. But as you look back at your career, these trajectories of really some being in a journalist, uh being in human rights and act social activism, environmental activism, and as you look back now, or as you continue to look forward to the work that you're doing with kids, the book, the field guide, do you have do you have like is there like one moment that every once in a while just you pause like, wow, I get to do this every Wednesday. Every Wednesday.

unknown 40:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:37

When we're with the kids.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

I mean, I I it still amazes me. Now I've been doing this birding program with the kids. I started, so we left New Orleans, we left the South in 2007, I moved to Madison, I started my PhD, and Katrina was in 2005, and I started the kids program in 2009. And of course, that story is in the book. And I started the kids program in large part to try to protect the park because I realized like the city will value the park if the park is a solution to a problem. And the kids living in the neighborhood were viewed as a problem because they were latchkey kids, they had nowhere to go after school and not being supervised, and there was no environmental education and all that. And so putting the kids together with the park, two solutions. I didn't view the kids as a problem. But so I've been doing this now since 2009.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

And I it's it's not easy. It's not teaching a regular class in the college. I teach the class and then it's double the work. I bring them to this elementary school to pair them with these squirrely kids. And I'm very involved with the school and the staff, and it's my school, it's in my neighborhood, neighborhood, my neighbors' kids go there. I I watch them grow up. So it's much more than just teaching a normal class. But I can't imagine. I mean, I keep doing it because I love it so much.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

So much fun.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

So the the so the program with the kids began 2009.

SPEAKER_01 42:11

No, right. In Madison.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

In Madison, okay. And you I I just uh I have had coffee, my brain synapses are firing here. So 2009. Uh so we're talking 20 or 16, 17 years right now.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

And how old were the children in Madison?

SPEAKER_01 42:30

The children were in middle school, so there many of them are in college or through college.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

All right. So stop so hold that thought. How's it gonna feel when you have a student come up to you, or how has it felt? Because maybe that's already happening, and somebody comes up to you and says, Dr. O'Kane or Trish or Ms. O'Kane, guess what? I was in your program, and now I'm studying to get my bachelor's or my master's degree in environmental education, activism, ornithology. How's that gonna feel?

SPEAKER_01 43:07

Well, I'll tell you how it feels. The first, oh, so I moved here in 2015. I was hired by Vermont to replicate the program. By the way, Brown University invited me down there. I went three years in a row. They also have a birding program. They copied my model. And other universities have copied it. But anyway, the first class I taught here, there was a boy, uh very squirrely.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

His name was You use that term a lot, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

Like a blue jay, just screeching, I mean ear splitting. And he just was so loud all the time. And I had him all through fourth grade, all through fifth grade. He wasn't particularly interested in the birds. He just loved his college student and he loved to scream and dance and go crazy, right? But very loud. So, not a kid I would have thought. Would have gotten into birding or anything. And he I other kids came and he went on to middle school and high school. I lost track of him. A couple years ago, I was out birding very early on a Saturday morning, crossing a bridge near here. And it was like 7 a.m. on Saturday. And this young man was coming towards me on a bicycle and he says, Trench, and he starts yelling, Trench. Like, what? Who are you? And it was this boy, Jay. And he became one of the top birders in New England.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 44:33

Studying wildlife ecology now. He just went to college.

SPEAKER_00 44:36

I love it.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

And two of his two younger brothers also did the program. But they couldn't compete with the big brother. The big brother is the birding star. I and the photographer takes incredible photos of birds. I was so stunned. I'm sitting there thinking, what? And he said, Oh, I'm so excited. I'm going to see the blah blah blah that's out on the and I'm like, you're a birder? Oh my God. I mean, never. I would never, ever have predicted that.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

That's wonderful. In my coaching practice, sometimes the conversation is about getting out there. Maybe that you you have an idea of where you want to take your career, but you think of it as too many steps, too hard, too difficult. And we kind of talk about planting the seeds. And I I call it that can be assertively seeding, but I call it subtle seeding. And I I love as as you shared the story, that the the word subtle seeding came up because you planted a seed way back when he was a squirrely kid. And now where they're at, you never know. You just never know.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

You can never know, and you can never assume anything. And and I have my students now, former students, they are all over the country working as educators, lawyers, activists. They're doing all kinds of great stuff. And some are doing incredible work on birds, research and conservation work. I get emails and letters from them and postcards, and I cry with joy just to know what they're doing. So that's that's powerful. There's hundreds of them out there doing this. Hundreds of them.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

I love it. Trish, before we head out, just a reminder for our listeners. If we're going to send uh them anywhere to learn more about you or your work, the book, where are the best places to go?

SPEAKER_01 46:41

Well, my author's website that you're going to link. If you go, if they Google my name, okay, and you'll they'll see my publications come up. I've written for the New York Times. I occasionally publish stuff in different magazines. Right now I'm publishing quite a bit on my front porch forum, which is a neighborhood forum, just about the war and what's happening because I'm so upset. But yeah, I do occasionally publish in newspapers in the University of Vermont also. That website.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

Well, we'll provide backlinks to their website, Trish O'Kain.org, the university website, and we'll also direct people, hey, just do a Google search on Trish O'Kain, which by the way, I did.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

So there's a lot of stuff on here.

SPEAKER_01 47:25

I hope it's all great.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

Trish, it's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast. I hope you enjoyed yourself. It was it really is wonderful to meet you and these little micro connections of places you've been. I've been, I will take you up on that offer for Madison. I'll be up there in August. I may just go ahead and change my itinerary just to make sure I'm there. Uh, at least a day early. If anything, I'll go, I'm gonna go out to Warner Park. I once read a book about the it was called Longitude, the man who invented the ability this chronometer, which was the ability to and I forget then who wrote who the author was, but I remember when I was in the UK and I lived there for a while, I was going to Greenwich because I wanted to see what had been invented. That was just such a cool thing. And it it's so Warner Park will be up there when I go to Madison. So it's wonderful. I've heard about it, read about it. Now I gotta go see it. So I love it. Trish, it's been a pleasure again to have you on the podcast and wish you the very best.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

Yeah, wish you the best too. Thank you for what you do for the feathered cause.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

All right. Listen, stay in a line. We're gonna do a very quick close, and you and I can have a final chat, okay? All right, folks. We have just been chatting with Dr. Trish O'Kane. Trish is an environmental educator, action researcher, and uh promoting justice and the environment, social justice, I should say. And she is the author of the memoir Birding to Change the World. Now, you have to read the book. If you're if you love birding, the idea of getting outside, being with nature, slowing down. This is a wonderful read, just uh to hear Trisha's story and also her passion around the not only working with kids, but also using birding as a way to change your life. And we're also we'll have a backlinks to the Art of Flocking, which is her action guide that is also on her website. As for us, you can find this episode on our my website, our website, the outdooradventure series.com. We are also on LinkedIn and Facebook. The video of this episode, which includes uh the map of Madison as well as scrolling through the art of flocking, that'll be all up on our YouTube channel, Outdoor Adventure Series. And of course, you can listen to this episode wherever you get your podcast from. And the best thing about podcasting is you get to download episodes. So download an episode or two, go find a park, take a walk, and listen and watch for birds. And also, in addition to listening to the podcast, you can listen to those birds as well. Okay, folks, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, go out there and have a fantastic day. And we look forward to having you join us on a future episode of the Outdoor Adventure Series podcast. Take care now.