Humans of Duke Sanford - Humans of Duke Sanford

$(Part 1 of 2) Growing up in Wyoming gave me an immediate appreciation for nature. Living in a log cabin 70 miles from the nearest stop light, seeing bears in the summer, having our idea of a traffic jam be buffalo crossing, it was a special place. It made me wonder how a natural place endures and I realized quickly that my backyard was along Shoshone National Forest. Public lands were at the heart of any conservation in the US; deciding to set aside lands from rapacious extraction at all costs. At the same time, folks around me didn’t have the same view of nature. They were surrounded by awe and wonder, but there was a sense of entitlement and ownership; their proximity to natural place was a privilege but they took it for granted. That disconnect of proximity and appreciation for nature, and respect for policy choices that protected these places, was something I wanted to explore. In undergrad, I participated in the Expedition Education Institute, where we retrofitted a school bus and went from Marlboro, Vermont to Houston, Texas, looking at ways of getting energy from different bioregions and the impacts energy extraction has on communities. We looked at wind power in the Berkshires, pump hydro storage, the impacts of fracking for natural gas in Pennsylvania, mountain top coal mining in West Virginia, the impacts of deep-water horizon and oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico. The experience made environmental injustices of the fossil fuel system vivid and real and present. I'll never forget standing on the edge of a mountaintop, one of the few that you could actually access because most had been bought up by the coal companies in West Virginia, seeing the utter desolation of the slopes in front of me and continuing to hear explosions of ongoing mining – all while knowing that my guide had chronic health issues from poisoned water he'd been forced to drink. That’s an experience I carry with me. And it makes it important for me to ensure that whatever work I'm doing is in service to creating the kind of world where people don't have to live with explosions going on around them and drinking poison water. – Ian Hitchcock MPP’24$

(Part 1 of 2) Growing up in Wyoming gave me an immediate appreciation for nature. Living in a log cabin 70 miles from the nearest stop light, seeing bears in the summer, having our idea of a traffic jam be buffalo crossing, it was a special place.

It made me wonder how a natural place endures and I realized quickly that my backyard was along Shoshone National Forest. Public lands were at the heart of any conservation in the US; deciding to set aside lands from rapacious extraction at all costs.

At the same time, folks around me didn’t have the same view of nature. They were surrounded by awe and wonder, but there was a sense of entitlement and ownership; their proximity to natural place was a privilege but they took it for granted.

That disconnect of proximity and appreciation for nature, and respect for policy choices that protected these places, was something I wanted to explore.

In undergrad, I participated in the Expedition Education Institute, where we retrofitted a school bus and went from Marlboro, Vermont to Houston, Texas, looking at ways of getting energy from different bioregions and the impacts energy extraction has on communities.

We looked at wind power in the Berkshires, pump hydro storage, the impacts of fracking for natural gas in Pennsylvania, mountain top coal mining in West Virginia, the impacts of deep-water horizon and oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico.

The experience made environmental injustices of the fossil fuel system vivid and real and present.

I’ll never forget standing on the edge of a mountaintop, one of the few that you could actually access because most had been bought up by the coal companies in West Virginia, seeing the utter desolation of the slopes in front of me and continuing to hear explosions of ongoing mining – all while knowing that my guide had chronic health issues from poisoned water he’d been forced to drink.

That’s an experience I carry with me. And it makes it important for me to ensure that whatever work I’m doing is in service to creating the kind of world where people don’t have to live with explosions going on around them and drinking poison water. – Ian Hitchcock MPP’24 #HumansofDukeSanford #MPP