The first time I climbed a squeeze chimney was in 2018. It was the first pitch of an easy multi-pitch on Rap Rock- a granite dome big enough to identify by plane when you fly in or out of Tucson. The squeeze chimney was rated 5.6 and though the notes on Mountain Project said that it was sandbagged, I was climbing 5.10s on this mountain and was not expecting it to be hard. I *suffered* up that pitch, following behind my climbing partner. When I eventually made it up, I was covered in abrasions and bruises- one bruise on my thigh was shaped like a large exclamation mark. I was elated. I loved the surprise of how hard the climb was, the struggle up the rock, the challenge of a new style of climbing and learning a new way of moving, I even loved my scrapes and bruises. I have chosen to focus my life on systemic injustice, and to witness hardship and pain that it causes. In my late teens and early twenties, I worked on activist campaigns fighting mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia. For the last eight years I have lived in Tucson doing humanitarian aid work on the US - Mexico border. Now I am heading back to grad school to study climate change adaptation, disaster planning and climate migration. I am so excited and inspired to have found a path forward that synthesizes my passions and life experiences. My graduate education is a step towards my dream career working to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Climbing has been a crucial tool for maintaining my equilibrium and avoiding burn out. Climbing regularly takes me out into remote nature and gives me the space to connect with the beauty of the world. Through my work, I build up a lot of intensity inside. Climbing gives me an outlet for that intensity. When I am climbing I channel all of my stubbornness and drive into the challenge, the puzzle, the physical struggle. When I am climbing, I am fully present in my body and the moment. My last year and a half has been incredibly hard. My dad was diagnosed with brain cancer and died last December. I stopped working to spend time with him and help with his caretaking. My dad was the person who instilled me with a love of the outdoors. He took me on backpacking and hiking trips in the Cascade Mountains in Washington State starting when I was small enough to be carried on his shoulders. I grew up on stories of his Pacific Crest Trail hike in the 1970s, and through-hiked it myself when I graduated college. When I discovered my love of climbing it fit within my existing love of the outdoors that I learned from him. The struggles and joy of a day climbing outside clear space inside me to return to social justice work that is often bleak and sometimes traumatic. Being in nature connects me to the memory of my dad, and helps me process my grief. I am expecting grad school to be consuming. I will be focusing on the staggering climate change challenges we are facing in the near future. I am looking forward to climbing as a way to get me out into the forests and mountains. Climbing will be a way that I carve out clear breaks for myself and make space inside me to feel my emotions and hold the intensity of my work.

In October 2022, my dad, Bob Erskine, received a diagnosis of glioblastoma brain cancer. While the news of an aggressive terminal cancer is always shocking, my dad had always been active, dedicated to his health, and had a strong social network. He seemed like the type of person who would age gracefully into his nineties, and I hadn’t begun to contemplate his mortality. My dad and I were very close, and he profoundly shaped who I am. As a child, he would tell stories of his travels around the world as an archaeologist. In the ‘90s, when my family lived in Beijing, my dad learned enough Chinese to get by, and avidly explored the city by bicycle, often taking me with him. In the summers, we would return to the States to visit family, and he would take us backpacking in Washington State. He told me stories of walking from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail. I grew up wanting to hike it too, which I did in 2013. My dad instilled in me a sense of possibility, adventure, and a deep appreciation of nature, which I tap into both as a break from day-to-day life and as a value that fuels my career passions for building resilience to climate change and disaster. In the midst of my dad’s sickness, I realized that I wanted to return to school for a master’s program in urban planning. It is my dream to apply my love of the natural world to the urban environment to make cities healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable while also protecting wild spaces. The year following my dad’s diagnosis was incredibly difficult. I live in Tucson but quit my job as a humanitarian aid logistician and flew to my parents in Maryland to be there for his brain surgery, recovery, and his chemotherapy and radiation treatments. The effects of his sickness varied. The cancer tumor was in the part of his brain where speech is located, and swelling in his brain impacted his ability to find words and remember names. In the fall of last year, his health deteriorated. My family spent several months essentially living in the hospital, supporting him through multiple medical emergencies. It was painful, stressful, and at times traumatic as we navigated the ups and downs of the medical system, and he continued to worsen. He died in December, and I am still grieving and trying to adjust to the loss. Somehow, despite all this, I submitted my grad school applications, and I will be heading to the University of Virginia this fall. It is intimidating to relocate in the midst of grief, but I will be moving closer to my mom and sister. Through the loss, I have been thinking about what I can learn from my dad. He was incredibly good at maintaining relationships from every chapter of his life and showing his love and care to his friends and family. I have been much more intentional about my connections with family, and when I move, I intend to bring that same intention to continuing the friendships I have here in Tucson as I begin this next stage of my life. My experience with cancer and the precarity of life has led me to a lot of introspection which has clarified a path forward that synthesizes my passions and brings me closer to family. I am eager to begin grad school and use my education to make positive change in the world.

At 33, I’m thrilled to be heading back to school. It took me years to figure out which path of higher education would synthesize my interests and skills, and I feel lucky to have found this master's program in Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Virginia. It ties together interests I’ve pursued and sets me up for my dream career in climate change adaptation. In my late teens and early twenties, I was on the traditional education path earning a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies at Oberlin College. Although I got good grades, I was more interested in activism than school at the time. I led student environmental groups and volunteered for an organization fighting mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia. Post-college, I embarked on a 5-month backpacking trip along the Pacific Crest Trail. My dad had hiked it in the 1970s, and it had been a lifelong dream. This was followed by a series of odd jobs, including working as a bike courier through a polar vortex in Cleveland and as a builder on a straw-clay cottage. I continued doing environmental work but I grew disillusioned with the limited impact of my activism. In 2016, I turned my focus to direct humanitarian aid and began to work as a logistician with an organization called No More Deaths. The group’s mission is to reduce the deaths of people migrating across the Sonoran desert. While at that job, I took community college classes in auto mechanics to better manage the organization’s fleet of trucks, studied Spanish, and learned a lot about non-profit administration and finances on the fly. When COVID hit and my contract with No More Deaths ended, I decided to dip into my savings to build a tiny house trailer, another long-held dream. Despite the challenges of working alone during the pandemic, the project was deeply satisfying, and I have been living in the home I built since then. I went back to humanitarian aid logistics and when funding for my job ran out, I used my EMT license to work on movie sets doing first aid. Meanwhile, I was mulling over what was next in my life and eventually realized I could use an urban planning degree as a lens to study climate change adaptation. I had been interested in this since college but 12 years ago the field scarcely existed, and I hadn’t been able to figure out an entry point to the work. I see parallels between urban planning and humanitarian aid logistics, both involve the coordination of people, supplies, and resources. While planners focus on the future, their work too can have profound social impact. Both fields require the ability to navigate multiple systems at once and scale between macro and micro levels. Urban planning's role in mitigating and adapting to climate change excites me. Smart planning can anticipate climate pressures, prevent or mitigate disasters, and reduce forced migration. I am also interested in planning ahead to make urban centers more able to ethically accommodate influxes of people as the zones where it is hospitable to live shift at unprecedented rates. I intend to use my urban planning degree to synthesize the issues I have focused on in my life and career so far, in order to do meaningful, direct work in the future that addresses the intersection of climate change, disaster, and migration.

My first memories of bicycles were as a young child in Beijing in the ‘90s. At the time, most people there didn’t have private cars, and the city was filled with bikes. My dad avidly explored on his own bicycle, a black heavy steel “Flying Pigeon” that was the ubiquitous bike model in the city. I would ride in a child seat on the back, and I remember the busy bike lanes, which were small streets that ran along the chaotic main roads. Occasionally a car would break the rules to park half in the bike lane and half on the curb, and the cyclists would have to navigate around it. There were long rows of tangled bikes parked outside all the important buildings, and so many cyclists that they created bike traffic jams. Beijing was changing quickly, and by the time my family moved away, cars had gained prevalence in the city and the bike infrastructure was eaten away in the name of modernization. Bikes have remained a fixture for me. As a young environmentalist, I didn’t learn to drive until I was twenty-three, choosing to bike for transportation instead. After college, I worked as a bike courier in Cleveland, Ohio, through a Polar Vortex winter. I was the only female bike courier working there at the time. I would bundle up with waterproof pants, gaiters, thermal spandex, and ski goggles and ride my road bike all day through snow and below freezing temperatures delivering food and legal documents in a city with scarcely any bike infrastructure. Now in my thirties, I still don’t own a car, and my bike is my primary means of transportation. In the fall of this year, I am beginning a master's program at the University of Virginia in Urban and Environmental Planning. In recent years, I have been working in humanitarian aid logistics, but my dream has always been to find work doing climate change adaptation. I want to work on projects that make communities both environmentally sustainable and more resilient to climate change disasters. Improving cycling infrastructure in cities and shifting away from a culture centered around cars is a huge part of my decarbonization goals. As a cyclist, I have had my share of terrifying near misses and deeply understand the need for improved road safety. In my master's program, I want to learn how to redesign cities so that they are not just inviting to cyclists but built around bikes, and then implement those concepts as part of climate change adaptation projects in my career.