Fish out of water

Audrey Hunter (she/her)
Hometown: Dallas, Texas
Major: English, '28
Internship: Henry's Fork Foundation

In a time of growing climate anxiety, a summer internship at the Henry's Fork Foundation has reshaped Audrey Hunter's perspective on what is possible.

I think I’ve had one of the artsiest upbringings anyone can ever have. In Dallas (a metroplex of 7 million people) my mom ran a youth theatre company, which led me to a theatre high school, which led me to my current improv-heavy, co-op-centric Stanford bubble. It’s safe to say I was the odd one out here in rural Idaho, at a conservation nonprofit largely based around protecting the Henry’s Fork river, also known as the fly fishing mecca of the United States. It didn’t help that all Idahoans hate people moving in from out of state, and the two most sinister culprits seem to be Texans and Californians.

But despite my both Texan and Californian status, everyone here has been incredibly kind to me. Even though I’m horrible at it, my co-intern Claude continues to take me fly fishing, dedicated to helping me catch a trout. As a science communications intern, I am firmly outside my lifelong arts bubble, beginning to understand how transferable and valuable narrative and storytelling skills are. My vision for what kind of work I can do, what kind of communities I can exist in, is rapidly expanding, ushered along by endlessly generous and talented peers and mentors.

My reevaluations go far beyond my own life and skill set, however. This is your warning: I'm about to take a sudden and slightly dark turn. While I’ve spent my life writing, directing, or otherwise participating in plays, my occasional foray into the natural sciences via books, articles, and the occasional Oceans or EarthSys class has led me to construct another narrative: a narrative about the world. Specifically, that we’re marching towards the end of it. Rising sea levels, collapsing coral reefs, fish-killing algal blooms, insect population decline, biodiversity loss, dismantled ocean monitoring systems, slashed habitat protections, the warming climate. Things do not seem to be going well on any front. I felt, and feel, a lot of fear about the future. I try to detach myself from it all, but it inevitably fails. I am by no means an expert, I’m really not even a STEM person at all, but I struggle to find any hope in my narrative about the future. I thought nothing could make my narrative any brighter. Then I came here.

Here, we face symptoms of global issues. The warming climate leads to less snowpack, reducing streamflow greatly. Warmer temperatures also encourage giant algal blooms that strip some of our waters of their clarity and oxygen content, and can even sometimes be toxic. And of course, the river itself is getting warmer. In the hot, hot summers, irrigation demands bear down on the river. Obviously, the Henry’s Fork Foundation has no way of making the summer any less hot, or putting the snow back in the mountains. But they can protect a river, monitor it closely, ensure anglers and irrigators get what they need, all while uniting a community around these goals. The impact is tangible, both for the river and those who rely on it. My mentor, Dr. Christina Morrisett, wrote a paper that heavily informs how outflow to the river is currently managed, helping flows stay high even in the hottest, driest conditions. Our research on aquatic macroinvertebrates has helped confirm their health and presence in the river in a time when anglers thought they were disappearing. Changing temperatures have affected hatch times, but there are still plenty of bugs in the river! This is the kind of information the community relies on, and I’m proud to be a part of the team that provides it.

This new, up-close, community specific perspective has not eased my climate anxiety, but it has reshaped my view of what’s possible, and what to do about it. I don’t know any more about how the world’s biggest problems will be solved. All I know is that it’s entirely possible to make things better for your community, for the ecosystems you care about, and that sometimes these accomplishments will lead to insights that are applicable around the world. Coming in as a little bit of an outsider meant I had everything to learn—and having everything to learn meant my worldview could be changed for the better. My narrative about the world has a little more hope now, and it’s thanks to the wonderful community I’ve found here at the Henry’s Fork Foundation.