This Earth Day we head north to Alaska with alums Russell Heath '78, former Director of the South East Alaska Conservation Council and Conservation Scientist Lauren Oakes '04 to discuss their books Rinn's Crossing and In Search of the Canary Tree. Via fiction and non-fiction join us for an insider's conversation on conservation. Rinn’s Crossing Synopsis Out on bail, Kit Olinsky fights a scorched-earth battle in the state legislature to save the Alaska she loves. She can only win if she betrays her friend Dan Wakefield, a Tlingit fighting desperately for what was promised to his people a generation ago. In the backrooms of the legislature, Senator Billy Macon manipulates Alaska’s grimy politics with vindictive mastery in his drive to the governor’s mansion. Like a lone wolf, Rinn slips out of the forest to protect Kit, never suspecting that he has more at stake than a lonely prison cell.
About Russell Heath ‘78
In his teens, Russell Heath hitchhiked to Alaska and lived in a cabin on the banks of the Tanana River; in his twenties, he lived in Italy and then traveled overland across the Sahara, through the jungles and over the savannas of Africa and into southern Asia; in his thirties, he sailed alone around the world in a 25-foot wooden boat; in his forties, he wrote novels; and in his fifties, he bicycled the spine of the Rockies from Alaska to Mexico. He’s worked on the Alaska Pipeline, as an environmental lobbyist in the Alaska Legislature, and run a storied environmental organization fighting to protect Alaska’s coastal rainforests. Several years ago, he moved to New York City to dig deep into leadership development and coaching. He now coaches business and nonprofit leaders intent on making big things happen in the world. In Search of the Canary Tree Synopsis Where mountains meet the ocean in Alaska's Alexander Archipelago, white skeletons of dead yellow cedar trees stand prominently amidst a verdant landscape of old-growth forests. Researchers spent nearly three decades determining that climate change is causing the death of this majestic species. When, in 2010, young Stanford University scientist Lauren E. Oakes set out to measure the demise of the yellow cedars, she found herself immersed in an even bigger, and totally unexpected, story: how the people of Alaska were adapting to the tree's disappearance, and how the forest was adapting to the changing climate conditions. In Search of the Canary Tree: The Story of a Scientist, a Cypress, and a Changing World chronicles the six years Oakes and her team spent studying thousands of trees and countless plants and interviewing locals whose lives are directly affected by the loss of the yellow cedars.
About Lauren Oakes ‘04
Lauren E. Oakes is a conservation scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth System Science at Stanford University, and a freelance writer. She wrote much of her first book, In Search of the Canary Tree (Basic Books, 2018), while teaching in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric. It was selected as one of Science Friday’s Best Science Books of 2018, the Second-Place Winner of the 2019 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award, and a 2019 finalist for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Communication Award. In addition to publishing her climate- and forest-related research in peer-reviewed journals, Lauren has contributed to National Geographic, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Scientific American, Anthropocene Magazine and Lit Hub, among other media and literary outlets.