I completed my internship with the Napa Sierra Club Group back in December 2020. After the internship, I attended Napa Valley College for a semester. I took four classes but ended up dropping two of them because I was having trouble learning everything on my own at home. Once I finished my classes, I applied for a job at Bothe-Napa Valley State Park as a Park Aide / Lifeguard. As a Park Aide, I mainly worked in the entrance kiosk greeting visitors and informing them about the park. I also would drive through the campground to check on our campers to make sure everything was running smoothly. My favorite part of the job at Bothe was when I got to hike through the park to get a better sense of what our trails were, so I could relay that information to visitors. I worked at Bothe until the end of 2021, and my favorite part of the year there was in autumn and winter when it started to rain and I got to see all the fungus and little green sprouts grow out through the destruction leftover from the Glass Fire of 2020. I left my job in Bothe at the end of 2021 because I didn’t enjoy the long commute to the park in Calistoga from Napa. I took a few months off to travel and figure out what I wanted to do next. In May, I found a job at The Hub Bicycles in Napa and have been working there ever since.

Since my internship with the Sierra Club, I haven’t been as focused on the environment as I used to be. I still enjoy and appreciate it as much as I used to, but I’m not as interested in the politics of environmental legislation anymore. I feel that with the work I’ve been doing over the years, I’m still involved with the environment in some way. For example, when I worked at Bothe, I got to work in a beautiful little nugget of nature that’s tucked away in the Napa Valley. I would promote the park to my friends and family through word of mouth and over social media so they could also share in the wonders of the open space. With my current job at The Hub Bicycles, I get to encourage people to get out and ride a bike and tell them about the many benefits that come along with it. And most days I ride my own bike to work! While I feel that my contribution is small, I still feel that it’s important to start making a difference in your local community because you can only grow from there.