This is a series of flash interviews with people I admire, people who are doing something—anything, a lot of things—for the Earth. These folks walk the walk, each of them in their own way, using their own unique skillset. They dedicate their energy, their time, and their hearts to a crucial cause: the preservation of this precious planet we call home.
I’ve never met Rebecca O’Connor, but I’d sure like to. When she subscribed to Rx Nature (yay, Substack, for the connections!) her bio caught my eye. Here’s a woman who engages in the sport of falconry, who works to save endangered lands and waterways, who writes passionately about nature because she believes in its power to combat isolation and loneliness and create a saner future for us all. That’s quite a resume!
When we corresponded, Rebecca told me she feels the natural world can offer us valuable lessons. “I think that could be a big part of the answer to so much of our turbulence right now,” she said. Then I found her mission statement on her website, which is equally inspiring:
“In every aspect of my work, I will strive to help people understand their connection to the wilder world, its animals (including other people) and to celebrate it.”
Rebecca is the author of more than a dozen books—references, novels, memoir—and works as co-executive director of the Rivers & Lands Conservancy, which works to preserve wild spaces in southern California. She says that fundraising for a conservation nonprofit is “at its heart … compelling and passionate storytelling … it’s teaching others how to find their own stories in nature.” That’s where Rebecca’s English degree and writing skills come into play. Last year, the California Arts Council recognized her as an Individual Artist Fellow. She also creates and sells prints of her artwork featuring birds and other animal species that live in her ecoregion.
Rebecca lives in Banning, California with various raptors, three dogs (Deckard, McClane, and Ripley) and a “snarky African grey parrot named Ty who has been commentating on my life choices for 28 years.” She spends as much time as she can exploring, photographing and hunting with her hawks in the chaparral, coastal sage scrub and desert near her home.
Tell me about some of your early experiences in nature.
I grew up with my grandparents and my grandfather had a deep love for all things wild. He pointed out migrating geese, empty paper wasp nests, and encouraged my need to try and rehabilitate every fallen nestling and broken-winged bird I found or was thrust on me by a neighbor. It was the summer I spent with him while he fly-fished at the family’s camp in Pennsylvania that sold me on nature. I was only in third grade, but I have indelible memories of raising tadpoles, collecting wild strawberries, finding a doe hidden in the grass and generally just running wild in the woods. However, he made it very clear to me that brilliant moments in nature could be found anywhere.
When I was ten years old, my grandfather pointed out a falconer’s peregrine sitting on our television antenna. It was the early ‘80s and the peregrine population was still very low. It was a rarity to see one. When my grandfather explained that someone was looking for their duck hunting partner and pointed out the anklets and bell on her legs, I was entranced. I had discovered I could grow up to be a falconer and nothing was going to stop me.
How did those early experiences shape your relationship with the natural world?
I went to college to study avian sciences, but I had a real problem with the fact that birds were made of chemistry and calculus, two subjects that made little sense to my storytelling mind. However, my grandfather had taught me I could find this joy in nature anywhere. So I volunteered at the college raptor center, pursued a degree in English and didn’t let my lack of a science degree stop me. I got my falconry license in my early twenties, and it was the time I spent on swaths of open land with my red-tailed hawk that shaped the way my adult mind saw the world. I learned that my solace, inspiration, and some of my best life lessons were provided by time in nature following the feral thoughts of a hawk. This was something I deeply wanted to share with others.
How do you connect with nature now … through your work or leisure or both?
I ultimately ran away to train birds for free-flight bird shows, starting at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and then all over the U.S., as well as Australia and Mexico. When I started publishing books, a wise leader convinced me to move into fund development and use my storytelling ability to raise money for conservation. Today, I am the Co-Executive Director of Rivers & Lands Conservancy. While we spend a lot of time at our desks, my leadership partner and I make it a point to get out on the land with our team when we can, and connect to our mission personally as well as professionally. And of course, I’ve never given up falconry and never will. I am certain that nature has the answer to almost any question I have, if I look and listen. That is especially meaningful to me now, as I try to navigate what it means and what my place in the world should be as I move into the crone phase of my life. (Honestly, I was hoping I’d be that old woman who all the neighborhood children are terrified they might encounter, with my wild yard and strange animals. Alas, it seems I’m actually going to be the neighbor who gives them cookies, sticks Band-Aids on their knees, and listens to their stories.) So I try to connect with my favorite nature spaces in some way every day.
What are your biggest fears for the future of our planet?
My biggest fear is that the generations behind me do not have the opportunities or the encouragement to experience nature the way I have throughout my life. When we sweat, cry, or bleed on land we create deep and meaningful connections to wild places. If there aren’t enough of us having these experiences, then my work preserving land in perpetuity may be for naught. More than that, how do our children discover future job possibilities in the environment if they don’t connect to the land?
People will not advocate for issues unless those issues are deeply important to them, and this usually comes from personal experience. I don’t want to argue about why the earth is being destroyed. I want people to have a reason to care, no matter why it is happening. If we cannot build these connections, I fear our planet is in even graver danger in the decades to come.
What is your biggest hope for the future of our planet?
My biggest hope is that people will discover how many moments of everyday awe are available to us in accessible nature, whether that is in our own yards, in a park down the street, or a container garden grown on a balcony. These moments of awe take us outside of ourselves, give us a sense of belonging to a larger whole, and make us more compassionate toward others. I think if more of us were seeking awe in nature, our communities and our world would reshape themselves into a golden age. I feel there is a stirring and a movement toward this and I am so very hopeful that it is coming. So I’m going to do all I can to usher it along.
Thank you, Rebecca, for being a Champion of Nature!
And I loved the pics too!
Wow, just Wow! What a “get” for an interview! Really enjoyed it; thought provoking, too! Thank you both!