Adapted from an interview with Levi Running by Kristine Wong.

When I was young, I lived in a trailer park with my mom in St. Paul, Minnesota. There wasn’t a lot of nature where we lived. But when I was 12, I started playing disc golf. The course I played was on a trail in the woods, and at each stop you threw your disc in a basket. I would come across cool animals—deer and birds. Then when I saw on TV how habitats for animals were getting destroyed, I wanted to make a difference for them. 

At 15, I moved south to live with my grandparents in Cottage Grove, where there’s a lot of cornfields and woods. My grandfather would take me to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area—that showed me what a place looked like that hadn’t been touched by human development. He’d organize trips there for recovering addicts. It’s super peaceful—you aren’t allowed to use motorboats or build any structures there. The water is so clear, you can see 30 feet down. 

Living with my grandparents was good for me. I had good jobs in sales, construction, and the tool industry. But I’d lose them because of the time spent with my friends. I was into pot a lot back in the day. Then I started selling. One day, when I was 31, this guy wanted to trade money and meth for my car. I told him no several times. But I needed the money, since I was living in my grandfather’s house after he passed away. So I sold the car. The guy turned out to be an undercover police officer. Then the police found my grandfather’s antique hunting shotgun. I was charged with first-degree drug possession and sales and second-degree possession of a weapon. 

I spent one and a half years in county and state prison, the last six months in a boot camp program run by the Minnesota Department of Corrections for people who don’t have a record of violence, sexual misconduct, or arson. The boot camp was out in the wilderness in northern Minnesota with no fences; it changed my life. It gave me structure and taught me discipline. We had sobriety training and learned how to get a job and manage money, and we took GED classes. It’s like the military: Every day you run four miles at 5 A.M. Your bed must be made perfectly, your uniform must be pressed, your boots and buckle must be shined, and your face must be shaved. A lot of guys complained, but I was excited to be working outside all day. 

During the last part of boot camp, I did a solar-installation training put on by the Midwest Renewable Energy Association. We were taught everything from how to read a wire to calculating the solar potential of a site to putting up a solar array. There was a lot of homework, which we did on top of our regular activities. At the end of the training, I was ready for a job in the solar industry.

After release, I got a job with a company called Nesco. On my first day, I worked on installing an array with a tracking system and motors. Soon I was one of the lead guys, because I knew what I was doing. Minnesota has crazy weather, so our working conditions can be challenging. We do a lot of large commercial arrays and put up solar panels with two feet of snow on the ground. My hands and feet used to freeze until I got boots rated for 94 below and insulated deerskin gloves. Instead of telling myself I’m too tired, I just beast-mode through it. Now, after six months, they want me to be a trainer and lead.

I’m also training to be a journeyman electrician. It takes 5,000 hours—about four years—to finish. Once you’re a journeyman, you have learned everything about signaling, wires, electricity, any kind of energy plug, and solar wiring—so you can do your own thing and help other people on the site. 

Every day now, I’m excited to go to work—to do something that makes a difference and helps the planet. I’m actually living one of my dreams, and the reality of this recently brought me to tears. The strength I’ve gained is helping me raise my two-year-old son, and I’m continuing to work on my other passion of writing music and rap lyrics. In the future, I want to start my own solar company and open up a disc golf course on my own land.

This article appeared in the July/August 2019 edition with the headline "Solar Boot Camp."

This article was funded by the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.