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Note from the author: Make your reading immersive with my playlist of music throughout provided throughout the story.
Are you like me, when is a song playing can it transport you, sweep you off your feet or make you cry? Can it insist that you dance, in the most awkward of places? Did you spend hours of your childhood making mix tapes to match every mood or season? Nature and music have been my passions, release, and confidantes in the best and hardest times of my life. They have pulled me from the dark and danced with me in the light. Song: John, I love you by Sinead O’Connor
Within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), our values focus on collaboration, integrity, stewardship, respect, and innovation. Every year at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, we host youth employees. From LGBTQ Rainbow Crews to an indigenous messaging apprentice and transportation fellow. One employee that joined our family has hit a different chord and is exemplifying innovation with the nature of music.
The Overture
Palmer (they/them) is an education specialist. A music teacher for children by trade, they thought teaching nature might have a translatable nexus, and decided to give the Service a try. Palmer is soft spoken, gentle in their approach and a friend to everyone.
Doting on Palmer’s every word, ensembles of kids have followed them eagerly over our large bridge, like music notes climbing up and down a sheet of paper. But the experience is always unique. Palmer has thrown out the cookie cutter and composes adventures far beyond the interpretive lectures of old. They have curated programs to meet the needs of each visitor group they work with by listening to them first, focusing on whimsy over fact-cramming, and developing new innovative ways to open visitors to their senses on the trails. Palmer is leading sensory strolls for our partners at HOPE Dementia, centering on the smells and sounds of the natural world. They also created an exploration game for the refuge’s Dia de los Niños event, using senses to solve nature’s puzzles. Song: La Carretera by Julio Iglesias
Now, Palmer is offering trail playlists at the front office for an immersive experience, connecting to those who embrace the emotional elevation of music. Anyone visiting can use the playlist – or not! – as a different way to enjoy the refuge. “I reflected on how even though often I love basking in the natural sounds,” said Palmer, “other times, specific music can really heighten my experience in nature. So, I’d love to encourage that with our visitors too!”
The Bridge
When I learned that Palmer sings and loves music, I told them I sang in a past life, and crookedly bragged that I was even Snoopy in a high school musical once. Palmer smiled and said they sing too, and they were in the same musical and played Charlie Brown. Ah, a soul duet discovered in Peanuts. Decades after I took the stage, Palmer reminded me of my high school’s version Charlie Brown, played by someone of similar temperament, nicknamed “Bugle.”
I grew up in a small town that bordered Arizona and Mexico. There wasn’t much to do. The nearest large city was an hour away so going there was an event. An exciting adventure. We’d go to a movie theater, eat at a sit-down chain restaurant, and buy the latest CD before heading home at sunset, filling the car with heavy guitar riffs so prominent you could almost taste their Seattle flannel. Song: Given to fly by Pearl Jam
Surrounded by clear paths to drugs or gangs, many of us found community in music. My friends and I were all in band. I played the saxophone and drumline. We would practice before school, during school and after school. At lunch we would sit in a concrete shaded area outside of the mariachi room and eat chili and lime-covered jicama and then we’d play soccer with a crushed can, bruising the toes in our battered Converse.
The most beautiful voice among the mariachis was David Hernandez, AKA “Bugle.” In my town, everyone from every generation had a nickname, often given to you whether you wanted it or not. Mine was Jojo - my position as second fiddle to my more popular sister, Gigi - yet far better than my best friends “Gremlin” and “Half” - named for their looks and short stature. Bugle played the tuba in band and had the stature to match. He had a soft voice that conflicted with his size, eyes that turned to tiny crescents when he smiled, and a small but frequent laugh. But when he sang…when he sang, his voice revealed a radiant prominence, demanding the attention of every ear. Bugle was our musical beacon. My school didn’t have choir, so if you liked to sing you were either a mariachi or were in drama. If there was music involved, Bugle was there. Song: Mariachi Idol with Bugle
When I was a freshman in high school, I was very introverted. I went with my cousin as she tried out for a musical, Charlie Brown. My cousin was a singer in mariachi and said I didn’t have to sing but convinced me to try out for a non-speaking role, and I agreed. Then the music teacher said they wanted all auditioners to also try out to sing. I had never sang publicly but heart-pounding, I gave it a go. I was given the role of Snoopy, Bugle was given Charlie Brown, and my cousin…well she got a non-speaking role and decided to quit.
Bugle was brilliant. His dark skin contrasted the bright yellow shirt, reshaping the iconic Charlie Brown into our version. Similar in temperament, Bugle was perfect as Charlie Brown: Seemingly timid but with a voice so beautiful, the audience would stir each time he walked on stage. Being from a small town, everyone knew him so when he began to sing, it was like quenching a thirst. The town was his champion, and I was charmed.
In case you are wondering…I did just fine singing about dog food and taking naps.
Eventually, I moved away from my hometown and the only record of my singing days was an old VHS tape overplayed my proud mom, worn, distorted, and fuzzy. Evidence that not only could I speak in public, but once upon a time, I sang.
The Outro
Shortly after meeting Palmer, I learned that Bugle had passed. In stark juxtaposition of the Bugle I knew, I learned that he died in a police shooting in my hometown. I didn’t really speak of it, but my brain wouldn’t let it go. The outro of this song didn’t make sense, not for my Charlie Brown. Song: Life in a glass house by Radiohead
I was transported to the black stage behind the velvet curtains as we waited for our time to sing; the Arizona sun reflecting off his brass tuba; the crescent of his eyes, and the strength behind his voice, filling the room over his guitarrón. It was a reminder that I come from a place where music was our binder. It saved us and it healed us. It tied us to each other like a chord of multiple harmonies.
When I look at Palmer, I see the potential we all have, to impact those around us. I think of Bugle. Filled with music, soft spoken, gentle in his approach and a friend to everyone. As I walk the refuge trails and see visitors with earbuds, I imagine their stories and wonder where the music has transported them. Which memory swells?
Throughout my life, nature and music have been there to lift my spirit, remind me of the people who have touched my life, and have enveloped me in a moment. There are days when only a silent stroll will do, but for others like me, grounded in music, safe in it, bound by it, saved and healed by it, Palmer is reaching a new chord on the refuge’s trails. They are welcoming the community with the universal language of music and unveiling new experiences, not defining them. They are turning up our senses for a new way to see the light through the trees.
We welcome you to visit, walk the trails and get enveloped in a moment. Share what you listened to at RidgefieldVolunteer@fws.gov and we will add it to the trail’s playlist, a curation of our life stories. Join us. Let us bring you in and take you back, like music notes climbing up and down a sheet of paper. Song: How it ends by Devochka
Tell us, what's on your nature playlist?
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