Exploring Art, Nature, and Conservation at Butano State Park

Episode 9 – Art: it’s only natural

SPEAKERS

Emily Harwitz (host), Elexis Padrón (guest)

[INTRO MUSIC]

EPISODE 9

Emily Harwitz 00:00

Hi and welcome to another episode of I’ll Go If You Go! I’m your host, Emily Harwitz. On today’s episode, we’re talking about one of my favorite things besides nature…and that’s art! I am happy to tell you that the two go hand in hand since art can be a powerful tool for self expression, connection, and conservation.

Here to weave it all together for us is our guest Elexis Padron, an artist, educator, and naturalist who believes that art is a way of seeing and can help us foster our relationships with nature. Get ready for this episode to open your eyes, minds, and hearts to the beauty all around us.

[MUSIC]

Emily Harwitz 00:38

We’re recording from Butano State Park with our guest today, Elexis Padron, who is an artist, educator, and naturalist.

Elexis Padron 00:44

I am so happy to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Emily Harwitz 00:47

So before we sat down to record this conversation, Elexis took us on a beautiful walk called the Six Bridges Trail and we counted 169 banana slugs, which is a personal record for me.

Elexis Padron 00:58

Me too, actually.

Elexis Padron 00:59

I am so happy to be here. This is one of my favorite parks and I’m very grateful that I actually also get to work here as a State Park Interpreter.

Emily Harwitz 00:59

It’s a beautiful sunny day. There are so many birds singing in the background, wind blowing in the trees. How’re you doing today?

Emily Harwitz 01:16

What does that look like?

Elexis Padron 01:16

Yeah, so as a State Park Interpreter, I run our education programs in several of the parks along the San Mateo coast. Primarily, we do a lot of school field trips at Half Moon Bay State Beach. During the summer, we’ll do junior ranger programs and campfire programs. We also do a lot of programs in the community, like our Library Rangers or we’ll table at a local monthly community gathering called Make it Main Street. I also coordinate volunteers and do social media and coordinate guided hikes, and I wear a lot of hats.

Emily Harwitz 01:50

Yeah, it sounds fun. You get to interact a lot with the public and park visitors.

Elexis Padron 01:54

Yes, and that is my favorite part of this job—is empowering people to kind of foster their own connection to the world around them.

Emily Harwitz 02:02

Before this conversation, you were showing us your nature journaling kit with your beautiful illustrations and some notes. And I love the way you described your approach to nature journaling.

Elexis Padron 02:11

Thanks. Yeah, so I will say most of the things I’m about to say are not they’re not my own ideas. They’re not new. I have learned so much from the nature journaling community. It’s a whole movement, and the Wild Wonder Foundation is full of really knowledgeable instructors and facilitators who I have learned a lot from.

But my personal nature journaling practice—I’m opening up to the first page of my nature journal where I’ve written down my reminders, my ‘This is why I do this. This is how I do this. These are my intentions.’ And the first one is “slowing down,” because we live in such a fast-paced world where there’s so much to do, so many adult responsibilities, oh, my goodness. [Laughs]

Emily Harwitz 02:53

Relatable.

Elexis Padron 02:55

[Laughs] And sometimes we just need to slow down. And this practice helps me slow down. It’s me saying, ‘I am taking time to just be here right now.’ And the second thing I’ve written down is “intentional curiosity.” I’m slowing down to be curious, on purpose, to look closer at the world around me. And that’s the third thing, which is “close observation.” And those things together—intentional curiosity with close observation—has helped me to build a very strong relationship to the place that I’m at. It doesn’t matter where I’m at. I can nature journal anywhere, and that helps me grow my relationship to that specific place.

Emily Harwitz 03:35

Yeah. So to have a nature journal, you don’t need to be an expert in the plants of that area and the nature. All you have to do is go somewhere and observe and write down what you notice. I love that in the way you described what you do as an interpreter is helping people build their relationships with nature and connecting them to the outdoors around us. What is it about art that makes it such a great tool for interpretation?

Elexis Padron 03:57

So, so many things about art. First of all, I will say, I love that art is an alternative entry point. One of the reasons I didn’t initially see this as a field that I could go into and study was because it just felt like it was being gate-kept. Sometimes science can feel unapproachable to folks, and art is for everyone. Art—I mean, so is science. Science is for everyone, art is for everyone. Nature is for everyone.

Emily Harwitz 04:23

I get what you’re saying, though, because there are more barriers to entry, like systemic barriers to entry for science. There’s a lot of training that’s involved. There’s very specific vocabulary you have to learn. And with art, it is very accessible in the sense that anyone can sit down with a pen and paper or with a song they want to sing. Anyone can start from any level at any time.

Elexis Padron 04:45

Absolutely, and that’s what I try to really impress upon people when we’re out in nature together, is like, ‘Hey, there is no right or wrong way to do this. This isn’t a class. This is for you.’ Somebody once asked me ‘what is art to you?’ And they didn’t like my answer, but I stick to it. Many years later, I’m like, this still makes sense to me. Art is a way of seeing the world. It is being able to look at something and find value and beauty in it. You know, sometimes that translates to putting it on a paper. Sometimes it translates to a dance or a song, but it’s about seeing the world around you.

Emily Harwitz 05:22

Yeah. So when we talk about using art as a way to build our relationship with nature, we’re also saying, here are different ways that you can observe the world around you, observe how you feel about it, and see what that inspires. Art is a direct way to express how you feel about the world around you. And you are gathering knowledge in a way, and it’s like a knowledge of what speaks to you, and it also helps to train your attention when you notice things in different ways.

Elexis Padron 05:52

Absolutely. And art requires attention. I really like John Muir Law’s definition of love, which is sustained, compassionate attention. And to me that definition of love is—oh gosh, this gonna sound so cheesy—but it’s the way forward. And it comes back to you, to use another quote, but this is really my favorite quote that I feel really kind of encapsulates why I do what I do—and it’s a Baba Dioum quote. He’s a Senegalese forestry engineer, and this was from an IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] meeting in like the 1960s: “In the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. And we will understand only what we are taught.” I hope I got that right.

But basically, we want to take care of what we care about and what we love, and I think art can be a really useful tool for helping people to get there, to help them care, to help them love this world, because they’ve spent time with it. And once you’ve spent time drawing something or painting or making an impression of a leaf, it transforms it from just something that was in the backdrop of your life, to a living being that you have a relationship with.

Emily Harwitz 07:11

Yeah, we love what we know, and art is a way to know the world around us.

Elexis Padron 07:16

Yes, yeah, exactly.

[MUSIC]

Emily Harwitz 07:27

Can you tell me a little more about some of the specific community programs that you do?

Elexis Padron 07:31

Yeah, absolutely. So there’s a few different avenues that I use. In my first summer working for state parks, I was here at Butano State Park every single weekend, and I developed a nature journaling guided walk where our nonprofit partner was able to provide little journals that we could pass out to people. And I would take people out—on the Six Bridges Trail, actually—and along the way, I would give us three different prompts, and we would sit for 10-15, minutes, and folks would write in their journals, and I would talk about how nature journaling doesn’t need to be a pretty picture. It’s a tool for us to connect with the world around us.

Emily Harwitz 08:13

Right, like there’s no right or wrong way to do it.

Elexis Padron 08:15

Exactly. I often tell people, your nature journal is for you. You never have to show anyone if you don’t want to, because there’s no wrong way to do it.

Emily Harwitz 08:26

And are people drawing with pens or pencils or—? I know that you have a watercolor set.

Elexis Padron 08:31

I do. I like to encourage people to go straight to pen. If I’m running the program, I am providing the supplies. I do not provide pencils with erasers. If I do provide pencils, they don’t have erasers. But I like to provide pens because it helps us to let go of perfection. If we have erasers, we’re constantly erasing trying to get it exactly right, and that’s really not what nature journaling is about. It’s about recording your observations.

Emily Harwitz 08:59

I think it’s really cool. That idea of letting go of perfection and just being able to make a mark and keep going reminds me of those redwood trees we saw on the trail with all the burn scars. You were telling us that the CZU Lightning Fire from 2020 came through Butano State Park, and thankfully, the fire wasn’t so intense here and there was mostly a helpful burn, but if you walk on the trail, you see all these burn scars, and knowing—it’s just part of the history of these redwoods now. It’s part of who they are.

Elexis Padron 09:24

Absolutely. It’s part of their story.

Emily Harwitz 09:25

Yeah!

Elexis Padron 09:26

And that’s what we’re recording in our nature journals, too, is our stories. It’s the world as we see it. Like, we could all sit here and nature journal the same thing and come away with something different. We would all see it differently because we’re perceiving the world through our own intersectional identities and worldviews that we hold.

Emily Harwitz 09:44

Earlier, you mentioned that when you nature journal, you just notice what speaks to you and that’s what you record. You don’t have to take measurements and observations in the same way as everyone else does or in a particular way. It’s just whatever speaks to you that day you can journal about.

Elexis Padron 09:58

Yes, absolutely. First and foremost, for me, nature journaling should feel fun. I don’t want it ever to feel like a chore. Taking measurements and recording data is absolutely one way you can nature journal. Some folks really like the sciency side of it. I am an artist, and I always have been, so I love to capture what I’m seeing. I like to try to just get the impression, the essence of something, and follow my curiosity so that it stays fun. And when you find something you’re curious about, just go down the rabbit hole because that is a gateway to learning and connection and caring about a place.

I teach an intro to nature journaling workshop at Henry Cowell [State Park] and this year, I am teaching a little art workshop called Advice from a Redwood at Big Basin [State Park] where I’m going to lead participants on an interpretive walk around the redwood loop, and we’ll talk about redwoods and how the fire affected them, and their capacity for resilience, and all of the things that make redwoods amazing, like their roots and community structure.

Emily Harwitz 11:02

Redwoods are so wise. They have so much advice for us to listen to. What’s some advice that you’ve received from redwood trees?

Elexis Padron 11:10

Stand tall, and look to your community for support. Those are, I think, the two big ones for me. My favorite fact about redwoods is, for being the tallest trees on earth, their root systems are relatively shallow compared to, say, a coast live oak who can send a taproot down that’s like 40 feet deep. But redwood trees, what is it, like 12 feet is about as deep as their roots go, and they’re hundreds of feet tall. So how do they stay standing in storms and wind? By connecting with the roots around them, using their community. They’re literally holding each other up through the storms! And I think that is so beautiful and such a model of what community in the human world could and maybe should look like. I’m a big fan of community care over self care. I think it’s really important for us to look out for each other, and that’s my biggest takeaway from redwoods.

Emily Harwitz 12:04

That’s lovely. Do you have any examples of advice that people have received, that you’ve seen them write in your workshop?

Elexis Padron 12:10

I did take photos of some of the things people wrote when I did this last year. Here’s one. Advice from a redwood: Community is everything. Appearances can be deceiving. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And, time heals all wounds.

Emily Harwitz 12:25

I like those. Yeah.

Elexis Padron 12:27

So yeah, people will have their own interpretation of what I tell them, and it’s the same with nature journaling. We’re perceiving things differently and so what we take away will all be different.

Emily Harwitz 12:37

Yeah. That makes me think: nothing is as it seems. Some advice that I’ve received from redwoods has to do with burns. It’s how I relate to emotions. I feel like, if you have a really strong emotion, sometimes it can feel overwhelming. I’ve been getting better at this as I age [Laughs]. With more life experience, I’ve been getting better at this, but when I was younger, I used to bottle up my emotions, and I just suppressed and suppressed and suppressed until at one point, they would just overflow, and then it would just be overwhelming. And that was not a very healthy way to deal with my feelings. It reminds me of how fire was suppressed in California and in so much of the state and especially in redwood forests. When Indigenous people were removed from the land, so was the fire, the cultural burns they practiced. And so we’ve seen the buildup of duff, of the vegetation, of all this flammable stuff in redwood forests, and that’s what contributed to like the CZU Lightning Fire Complex that burned so strong because we haven’t been letting the prescribed burns come through, the healthy fire to clear it out. And that’s like emotions that you suppress and suppress and suppress until eventually there’s a spark that lights it—

Elexis Padron 13:49

—and then it’s huge!

Emily Harwitz 13:51

Yeah, then it blows up and it’s huge, and things get way worse than they need to be. But if you let yourself feel the feelings, let yourself feel things as they come up, it doesn’t have to be scary, it doesn’t have to be destructive.

Elexis Padron 14:02

Yes.

Emily Harwitz 14:03

So that’s something I think about a lot when I’m in a forest, and especially when I’m walking through a forest and I see these burn scars on trees. I think it’s really beautiful because, yeah, these prescribed fires, these cultural burns, they maintain the health of the forest. And sometimes stuff needs to burn. Sometimes things need to get cleared out.

Elexis Padron 14:19

Absolutely. And the fires may burn you, but they won’t destroy you.

Emily Harwitz 14:22

And eventually you grow big and old and strong, and your bark grows thick and the fires won’t get to you at all. You’ll feel like, ‘Oh, that’s toasty. How nice!’ [Laughs]

Emily Harwitz 14:32

What else are you cooking up? Do you have anything else on the way?

Elexis Padron 14:37

I have some ideas. So when I started with State Parks, I immediately learned about this really cool grant and I was trying to find a way to make it possible to do nature journaling in all of our programs, like in all of our field trips. And so I wrote this really big proposal that also included public programs that went beyond nature journaling, but all centered around art and parks. Unfortunately, we did not get it, but I will be looking for more ways to make it happen.

Elexis Padron 15:05

But one idea that I’m really excited about is, I learned of this new piece of technology. Maybe it’s not that new, I don’t know, but I learned about this device called PlantWave. And what you do is, you take these little clips, and you clip them onto leaves or maybe branches, and it measures, if I remember correctly, the flow of water through the plant, which it then translates into some sort of wave, which the algorithm translates into music. So you can basically listen to music, like orchestrated by the water moving through plants. And I really, really want to get my hands on one of these and build a whole public program around it where we go out and we listen to the music of the plants and people make an art piece based off of what that made them feel, or how they interpreted it. It’s kind of similar to doing a sound map, which is a prompt that I lead people through when we nature journal, but it’s similar, but different.

Emily Harwitz 16:07

I think that’s a really cool idea.

Elexis Padron 16:09

Right? Because we’re such visual creatures, which is awesome, and I really am trying to incorporate more senses into the art practices as well. It’s another tool in our toolbox for deepening our relationship to our sense of place, tapping into as many senses as we can. Like when we were on our walk, I’m like, ‘hey you guys, smell this, feel this.’

Emily Harwitz 16:31

Yeah. Something I think is so cool about sound is that it’s a very physical sense. When you hear sound, it’s because the sound wave, the energy, the air particles, are vibrating against your eardrum. And you can also feel sound, like if you’ve ever been in an earthquake, you can hear it, but you feel it in your body, that rumbling, and it’s a transmission of this energy. And sound is the only sense that you can’t control. Like, if you don’t want to see, you close your eyes. If you don’t want to smell, you hold your nose. If you don’t want to taste, you don’t put anything in your mouth. But when sound happens around you, it impacts—like, it gets to you. You can’t stop sound from reaching you, and it’s immediate. So sound is a way to really be present. If you can be aware of the sounds around you, it’s immediately grounding.

Elexis Padron 17:13

Mhmm.

Emily Harwitz 17:14

So what do you know about the new Arts in California Parks program?

Elexis Padron 17:17

Well, I was super excited when I saw that it came out, and I think it’s a really great opportunity to create programming to invite people in, to invite the community in, and engage them in a new way. Like we were just talking about, art is a different entry point, and there’s so many ways that art can be inclusive and community-driven and really transform our parks into places that we go to, to places that we steward, places that we feel we belong to.

Emily Harwitz 17:47

So Arts in California Parks is a state-led initiative to put art in public places, and nonprofit organizations, culture bearers, Tribes, can propose projects in different parks that bring the community in and, like you said, put art in parks to help us see the parks in different ways. If you could put art in a park, what kind of art would you put there? What would you do?

Elexis Padron 18:10

Well, I’ve mentioned some of it already, like nature journaling for everyone. I want this movement to just spread. It has brought me so much joy and I want it to bring joy to everyone else. And also, things that are culturally relevant. Where I live, there’s a big Latino population and I would love to have programming that includes art and also feels relevant, like maybe we have like a papel picado-making workshop at the park. But there are already really great things that are happening. Yeah, I’d love to see more public art, more community engagement, collaborative art pieces. I love the idea of collaborative art pieces.

Emily Harwitz 18:46

Something I think is cool about this program is that when a community comes together to make art in a park, that art is an expression of their relationship to the park. I mean, that’s a great way to build a connection.

Elexis Padron 18:57

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s building a memory too. Like, ‘Oh, remember that time we went to Butano State Park and we painted pop art banana slugs under the redwood trees? Like, yeah, that was such a random thing, but I remember.’

Emily Harwitz 19:12

This really seems like the future of parks to me, incorporating art as one of the many ways that we can connect with and get to know the world around us. Because, like you were saying earlier, art not only feeds the community, but it also feeds back to the park, because by making art, you get to know a place more, you care about it, and those are the things that we protect.

Elexis Padron 19:35

Yeah, it goes back to that Baba Dioum quote, which is about us conserving what we love. And art is a pathway to that.

Emily Harwitz 19:43

It’s just one of the many ways to express our humanity. And our humanity is a part of nature, because so are we.

All right, congratulations, Elexis. We’ve made it to the lightning round. [Lightning bolt sound]

Elexis Padron 19:55

Yay!

Emily Harwitz 19:56

You ready?

Elexis Padron 19:57

I’m ready.

Emily Harwitz 19:57

Alright. Question number one: If you could work in another capacity in California’s landscapes, what would you be doing?

Elexis Padron 20:05

Oh, that’s hard, because I already really love what I’m doing. But I think it would be really cool to be a scientist’s personal nature journaling assistant. I just go out there and they’re like, ‘Look at this cool thing, record that.’ Like, ‘I got you, yeah, I’ll draw it. I’ll draw it right here, right now.’

Emily Harwitz 20:22

Like a science illustrator?

Elexis Padron 20:23

Yes, I want to be a science illustrator.

Emily Harwitz 20:26

Cool. Alright, next question: If you were a redwood, where would you be and why?

Elexis Padron 20:31

Oh, man, okay. I would like to be in my place of origin. Pfeiffer Big Sur [State Park], because it feels like the place where—one of the places where the seed was planted. Or maybe a redwood by my parents house so I can watch over them.

Emily Harwitz 20:46

And last question: You’re going to spend a day in the redwoods. What are three things you’re taking with you?

Elexis Padron 20:52

Absolutely no question about it, my nature journaling kit—which feels a little bit like cheating,because there’s a lot of stuff in there, but—

Elexis Padron 20:58

You can do that. I’ll allow it.

Elexis Padron 20:59

Great. Thank you. [Laughs] Thank goodness. A puffy jacket or some sort of layer to make sure I’m warm. And some good snacks.

Emily Harwitz 21:10

What kind of snacks?

Elexis Padron 21:11

Ooh, I’m a big fan of dried mango, that’s one I always have on me, and something salty, like dehydrated cheese or something.

Emily Harwitz 21:23

Yum. Well, it sounds like you’re gonna have a tasty, artful, warm day in the redwoods! Well, thanks so much for joining us today, Elexis, on I’ll Go If You Go. I had so much fun counting banana slugs with you and talking about art and parks and how that builds our relationship with nature.

Elexis Padron 21:38

Thank you so much for having me. 169 banana slugs is a personal record for me as well, so thank you for being part of this experience with me.

[OUTRO MUSIC]

Emily Harwitz 21:49

Thanks for joining us on I’ll Go If You Go, a Save the Redwoods League podcast. This season is produced by Leslie Parra and hosted, edited, and sound engineered by Emily Harwitz. Thank you to Adam Kaplan for tech support, and Caleb Castle, Marcos Castineiras, and Mary McPheely for graphic design and media support. Theme song and music by Nhu Nguyen and Anni Feng. You can find seasons one, two, and three wherever you listen to podcasts or on savetheredwoods.org where you can also find transcripts of each episode.

If you like our show, please rate and review. It helps more people find us and join in the conversation. For behind-the-scenes and bonus content, follow us on Instagram @IllGoIfYouGoPod. If you have comments or questions, you can email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you and maybe even share your comments on the podcast. That’s all folks. Catch you next time!