Lori Fagerholm

Personal Information

Full Name

Lori Fagerholm

Bio

I'm an urban girl with a rural heart, living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area and escaping whenever possible to the star-bright skies of the Sierra. A small plot of family land in Grass Valley has become my second home. One day, it may be my first home; for now, I'm just grateful for the occasional escape to a place where one can hear birds sing, where the air is fresh, and where the great, gaseous band of the Milky Way can still be seen in the night sky. I was raised with a reverence for nature and a deep respect for the environment. My mother taught me to recycle, to conserve water, and to remember that paper used to be trees. I liked to put my hands in soil, to mix it up, drop in seeds, see what grew. My grandmother taught me to feed plants, to shelter fragile leaves from the hot summer sun, to water some plants from above and some from the reservoir of their pots. A few special schoolteachers taught me how to compost, and that worms were more than just wiggly, slimy things that made you go "Eew." In my wanderings through forests and through foothill towns, I've learned that the citizens who live beside and inside the natural world are a bit more relaxed, a bit quicker to smile, and a bit more apt to stop and chat than most of us big-city dwellers. I think it's because the fresh air, the nighttime silence, the space to throw one's arms wide open without hitting anything but tree trunks help keep us sane. It's hard to feel our connection to the earth when there's no earth, only concrete beneath our feet. So, to me, saving the Sierra represents nothing less than saving my sanity.

History

Member for

2 years 8 weeks