Jojo Morelli joined the Hubbard Fellowship in February 2023 and her joy and enthusiasm have illuminated our lives ever since. Her drive to learn and her work ethic have made her a crucial part of our conservation team in Nebraska. All of those same traits have also earned her a new job, which she’ll be moving to next month. As of September, Jojo will be a Grassland Stewardship Assistant with The Nature Conservancy at Ordway Prairie Preserve in South Dakota. Unfortunately, that means we lose her before her Fellowship is over, but I guess the good news is that the Fellowship did its job of helping to get her the career position she’s been dreaming of!

Jojo is multitalented in conservation, but has an artistic side as well – not that artistic talent isn’t also an important attribute in conservation. In this blog post, Jojo shares some of her conservation jouney, as well as a couple excllent poems she’s written about prairies and land stewardship. Enjoy!

I didn’t always want to be a Hubbard fellow.

When I started college, I was a journalism major, bright-eyed and hopeful to report on impactful topics.

After a few years of coursework, I pivoted in a different direction: I wanted to work in conservation and do purposeful work to protect any portion of the natural world that I could. Spending time in nature has always been something that has brought me happiness and fulfillment, as I’m sure many readers of this blog can relate.

When I transitioned into field-based biological work, I was encouraged by family and friends to document some of my experiences for others, something I stubbornly protested (“I want to be thought of as a scientist now”). I was intent on changing my image and washing away my past experiences to be taken seriously.

Imagine my surprise when I understood that the conservation field and journalistic writing often intersect and create a huge impact. By then it was too late: the specific details of stories had washed away with a few years, and I wouldn’t be able to illustrate stories from my biological field work experiences with much accuracy.

Thankfully I came to my senses as I began to transition into a new realm of conservation: habitat management, specifically in prairies. Previously I had worked on species-specific monitoring projects or as a technician for graduate research projects. I wanted to move to larger-scope conservation work, focusing mainly on the ecology of habitats, instead of the needs of a particular species or group of species.

This time I wouldn’t forget to document my memories in the field, but still not in the form of an article or essay. I decided to go back to my favorite form of expression: poetry.

Poetry is something a lot of people have misconceptions about or simply don’t know much about. There’s a certain outdated mystique that comes with the expression style that attracts odd eccentrics (like myself). Of course, the art form has become more mainstream with digestible “Instagram poets” becoming popular (e.g., Rupi Kaur).

I like to describe poetry as my way of painting. I’ve always been awful at visual art (and never invested much time in it, this is true), so poetry was my way of making sense of the world around me growing up.

Now, I use it to recall and treasure some of my favorite memories working outside for a living, often intersecting with the strange political setting of conservation. I’ve written about topics from the interesting dynamic of a past military base now a wildlife refuge full of albatross to the experience of being bitten by a harvester ant stuck in my pants (and, regretfully, killing it).

The coinciding of conservation work and art to me was not something I had considered early in my career. I figured if I was going to write about my experiences, it had to be educational and for a larger audience. I didn’t realize that artistic writing could be a part of this relationship, and still reach an audience. Braiding science into art is another way to encourage everyone to feel welcome and included in the conservation field. This collaboration is another way of asking: This is how I see the natural world, but how do you see it? and actually listening to someone else’s answer.

In this way, I feel that if even one person reads a poem of mine and it encourages them to spend more time outside, I will feel thankful. If not, though, at least I can remember some of my favorite experiences with a little bit more color.

End note: For those looking to read great nature-themed poetry, I highly recommend Mary Oliver. It is an easy transition into poetry for anyone.

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I wrote “Grass of Us” while at a survey job and while frustrated with coworkers who scoffed at the plant identification work we had to do, preferring only to focus on wildlife work. Largely, this piece is in reference to human’s long connection to the grassland habitat, and how we need it for the future, just as it needs us. It will help us if we protect it.

GRASS OF US

You can cut, tarnish, rip

and all will be new, flower and pollen

in half a season.

Burn me and my past skins and seeds will feed.

I have always loved you.

My spidery fingers hold your platform

tight and safe.

I have heard you dance all these centuries.

I have fed your food.

Do you think I falter? My bones weak?

I have knit this world for you. A perfect cacophony

you pretend to understand.

Where are your trim rows? Your oaks you collided?

Awns of awe

glumes protectant

racemes, spikes, inflorescences

A glowing herald

I thought you knew?

This frenzied prayer, oath

There was no me or you

Now the wind shakes us in drought and invaders camouflage.

There is only us in this fractured dirt.

This forgotten communion, a cursed ancient.

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“Weeds” is about the evergreen fight against invasive plants. I wrote it while it was invasive plant spraying season at the preserve I was working at. This piece describes the process of going out as a team to spray “weeds” from ATVs/UTVs as quickly as you can, even when you know there is no way you’ll be able to call the job complete.

WEEDS

Aboard a bucking machine, burning a jostled sheen of exhaust into the drought, we perch

as sentinels or dreaded messengers, liquid with this metal Bess Beetle.

The tracks wilt in, tired, as if this is the last ounce left. As the arrogant yellow sucks away

what little moisture is left, as they watch with clammy hands the rest of the plants

turn, roll over, recoil. Digging down

To a hybrid state or a misty webbing of roots, unrestricted in the loamy dark, that lonesome fade.

Sunscreen burns my eyes again. The thick, sour scent of our blue-soaked solution

is visible, viable. Enough?

To quell the pounding burst of catalytic life, to quiet the rough spreading stains.

Here we are, crouched and waving royal blue flags.

Eyeing two paper photos to find the difference, and tuck into a scrapbook.

The Flat Tops Wilderness in northwest Colorado is flat and boring and no one should go there.

At least, that seems to be its reputation, given the scarcity of people during my backpacking trip last week. That was nice in terms of my desire for solitude, but it’s a shame more people don’t take advantage of this huge and gorgeous landscape.

In 2022, my son Daniel and I tested out the Flat Tops Wilderness Area with a short backpacking trip that started at Trapper’s Lake and let us explore that area. This year, I went by myself and started further east at Stillwater Reservoir. It was fantastic.

If you’re interested, I started at Stillwater Reservoir and hiked up to the plateau on Bear River Trail. I then followed Chinese Wall trail south for a while before heading off trail to the west toward a few small lakes I’d found on Google Earth that looked like they’d provide a great place to camp. I was right – it was a terrific spot. I camped there two nights and then hiked back out. During the days, I explored the area with my camera, not going too far because of the frequent thunderstorm activity.

My goal was an easy trip that gave me plenty of time to wander. I wanted to backpack just far enough to find a good campsite and use that as a hub for day hiking. That worked out really well.

Only two things got in my way. One was the near-constant threat of thunderstorms that made me a little nervous to get too far from camp, especially up on the high flat (exposed) ground between a lot of the places I wanted to explore. I still got to see a lot, but there were a couple spots I’ll have to hit on future trips. That’s fine.

The second was my own fault, which was that I did a poor job of acclimating to the altitude. I camped one night near Stillwater Reservoir before heading out on my trip. The reservoir is at about 10,000 feet, which is a lot of feet higher in elevation than Aurora, Nebraska (1,800 feet). My backpacking campsite was even highat about 11,300 feet… I figured I’d be uncomfortable for the first day or two, as has happened before, but my symptoms never did clear up and I actually cut my trip short by a day as a result. I’ll be smarter next time.

For someone who loves the aesthetics of wide open plains, the Flat Tops Wilderness is a pretty perfect mountain vacation destination. Being on a high elevation plateau full of grasslands eliminates the claustrophobia I feel when surrounded by tall mountains and trees. I could see storms coming from miles away and didn’t have to wait hours for the sun to climb over high peaks before it hit me in the morning.

At the same time, there is plenty of topography to create spectacular views. The plateau has lots of embedded peaks and ridges to climb and countless little lakes and streams to explore. Once up on the plateau, though, traveling between those features is really easy – and navigation is aided by the fact that you can see lots of landmarks the whole time you hike.

Since I only carried my backpack 7 miles in and 7 miles out, I figured I could pack a little heavier than I otherwise would. I didn’t bring a stove and used Kim’s very lightweight one-person tent (uses hiking poles for support). Because of that, I gave myself permission to bring quite a bit of camera gear. I didn’t weigh my pack because I knew the result would be well above the recommendations of people who know about such things (like Kim).

On the other hand, photography and a couple books (for rainy periods) were the two primary objectives for my trip. It was a vacation, after all. I didn’t want to spend all my time trudging along trails with a big pack. I wanted to scramble up ridges with a camera and wait patiently for marmots and butterflies to pose for photos. I wanted to take afternoon naps, if I felt like it. I wanted to watch hundreds of salamanders hanging out in the shallows of an alpine lake. …Ok, I hadn’t anticipated that last one, but was glad for the opportunity! (More on that in a future post.)

I didn’t see any really big wildlife species, but that didn’t bother me. There were plenty of marmots and pika, along with a fox that played peek-a-boo with me for a while from the top of a ridge. Birds sang all around me, including some I knew and some I didn’t. Most importantly, I saw multitudes of bees, flies, butterflies, spiders, and other invertebrates and had plenty of time to photograph them (in-between thunderstorms).

The American West has no shortage of great public land to explore, and I hope to keep finding new spots. The Flat Tops, though, is a place I will definitely return to in the future. Maybe I’ll run into you there sometime. If so, I’ll probably be lying prone trying to photograph an arctic blue butterfly or something when you hike past, so please don’t step on me.