TTphilos

Nature

Click an image to visit a post

Trees and rocks are like visual antioxidants, you can just look at them and your head feels clearer. Movement slows time and grows happiness like watering a houseplant in the sun. Imagine the contents of other pockets of the universe, and we here get the combination of human consciousness and sliding on snow. Sometimes we need a little inspiration to remember. Take these pages like leaves on your windowsill, reminding you of what waits for you outside.

Illusions canyon, Arizona, 2017 (photo journal)
A slot canyon is like a video game–you move from room to room, challenge to challenge, focused to avoid death, or at least to find sun once the tenth swim has chilled your bones.
Alpine mountaineering, Swiss Alps, 2016 (photo journal)
The greatest feature of a science career is getting your flights funded for international conference trips and ducking off for some fun on the side!
Arapaho Peak South (trip film 5 min)
A little film from a mountain to remind you of the fun and beauty to be had outside.
First descent of X Creek, Grand Canyon, May 2014 (photo journal)
A technical Grand Canyon descent, we think this was the first for this creek. I’m calling it ‘X’ creek so I don’t ruin somebody else’s chance to re-pioneer it!
Packrafting the Verde River, Arizona (trip film, 10 min)
Three days of rugged, hot, beautiful country with a 12 mile float. One of my first Arizona backcountry trips.

Trees pollute. Is that bad? (science film, while packrafting! 2 min)
Ronald Reagan blamed trees for polluting. Should we cut them down? As usual, the effect depends on context.
Tropical Forests and Climate (science film 60 sec)
At Biosphere 2, I’m working to understand one of the many fascinating ways that tropical forests and climate control each other.
Ecosystem Ecology from the Amazon to the Arctic (science film 7 min)
Learn how the biology of ecosystems affects the fate of the planet under climate change. A science film introducing the Saleska Lab research group.
Dissolving the Green Wall: Stories from the Tropical Plants of Biosphere 2 (documentary film 9 min)
When you look out over a tropical forest, or even the weeds in your garden, its easy to see little more than a ‘green wall’. But each of these species has a story to tell…
The Isoprene Story (documentary film 4 min)
Isoprene makes the Smoky Mountains smoky, and may help tropical forests combat climate change. In this research mini-documentary, I work to unravel a piece of that story in Biosphere 2.
Tyeen Taylor interview on the Mrs. Green's World radio show (audio 30 min)
In this show, Mrs. Green gave me the opportunity to branch out from her typical focus on sustainability in the desert southwest, and talk about tropical forest research.

Knowledge

Click an image to visit a post

What is science? For me, it is red sap oxidizing black on the corner of a notebook page, blisters from rope handling, envisioning a pulse of breath from hundreds of miles of forest and zooming in to see the processes that could make that pulse change its beat, it’s a boat on a river, tatú for dinner with friends who know the forest better than I could ever imagine to. The Amazon forest is a great wilderness. In these pages, my friends and I do what we can to help us all learn how it works, and what it faces with climate change. And we try to enjoy it while we are there, and while it is there.

Being

Imagine the physical surface area of Earth. Big. Small. Imagine the ambition that is most recently in your mind. What is it? See that you now face a sphere of motivations, memories, imagined futures, all overlaid on the physical space around you, anchored by your own body. And the person nearest you? Imagine their body, surrounded by a sphere of personal experience. Even with little space between you, your worlds are very different. Imagine these spheres populating the surface of our planet. How big is Earth now?

A Letter to Londub (artistic letter/poem film 7 min)
An artistic letter/poem film about life in the desert for two dear friends who moved away. Rap with natural beats in the latter half.
the establishment (creative writing, 1p)
A peaceful evening on a dirt floor with some Sonoran desert “locals”.
Throwing Nothing
A poem film by Tyeen Taylor and Eric Magrane. Filmed in the biomes and bowels of Biosphere 2 and read in its echoing lung.