From Nebraska Public Media....
'Conservation Works' host Carlee Moates (Platte Basin Timelapse) traces her journey from southeastern Nebraska to conservation storytelling, developing a new way to see along the way.
Personal Essay from Moates:
I'm a Nebraska girl who grew up outside.
I was raised on a farm in the southeastern part of our state and in a creative family. My dad often played his guitar on the porch and mom cut our hair in the pasture where the wind blew it away “to be used in bird nests,” she said.
As girls, my sister and I collected frogs in our sundress pockets. We carried kittens around our barn in five-gallon buckets and before school, I’d pull a bale of hay out for our horses. I also had many wild neighbors: owls, foxes, raccoons and deer. My family marked seasons by greeting new calves on my grandpa’s ranch in the early spring, camping trips in the Rocky Mountains during summer, and harvest in the fall.
Respect for nature and the lessons it teaches were instilled in me at a young age. I figured I’d grow up to be a veterinarian, as many animal-lovers do. I liked science, I was good at math and I had a creative mind.
Could I bring them all together?
While on family trip to town, probably to celebrate a birthday, we wandered into a photographer’s gallery on our way to dinner. I remember being drawn to a photo where I came eye-to-eye with the intense gaze of a burrowing owl. Looking around, Dad said, “You could do something like this.” After all, my parents had given me a red Kodak point-and-shoot camera, something I was steadily becoming obsessed with.
Read the complete story about Moates at https://nebraskapublicmedia.org/en/about/inside-look/blog-posts/following-wildlife-water-and-wonder-across-the-great-plains/