Magnify

my mother had given up on getting me into a dress. I preferred clothes in which I could run and climb trees. On weekend trips to the mountains, I wore holes in the knees of "indestructible" jeans, scrambling up and down rocks. At home after school, the best place to find me was halfway up an oak tree with a book, reading as the leaves shimmered around me.

Every summer, we went to Yosemite, where I swam in the Merced River and hiked the trails. One night, a park ranger's talk introduced me to mountain man John Muir. Walking back to our tent cabin beneath a star-softened sky, I felt his spirit beside me, encouraging me to keep exploring the natural world. "The mountains are calling and I must go," he once wrote. Right behind you, Mr. Muir. The enduring grandeur of Half Dome and the wild waters of the Merced imprinted themselves on my heart.

In 1980, when the new Yosemite National Park management plan came out for review, I ordered a copy and read the huge document, cover to cover. I was 14 at the time. I even wrote a letter to the park superintendent, advocating removal of all cars from the floor of Yosemite Valley. I never heard back from him. I assume he's still thinking it over.

I knew what I wanted to study in college, but back then, my traditional Ivy League school didn't offer "nature studies." Never heard of it. Try majoring in biology, they counseled. Try economics, or political science. I needed courses from each of those disciplines and more. Try a different school, I decided.

On the West Coast, they understood environmental science. I spent four semesters immersed in it, including one summer of field studies in Montana, aka "backpacking for credit." That's the summer when my love for nature became political. We backpacked through glorious wild areas, then wrote papers advocating their designation as "wilderness." The issue seemed as clear as a high mountain lake to me.

Montana's congressional delegation thought differently, which came as a shock. How could these palaces of nature not deserve protection? How could anyone not care about the Earth, or care but not protect it when they could? For the first time, I confronted the fact that other people, people in power, didn't agree with my position. That's when I discovered I had a position - a point of view with political implications - as well as a simple and heartfelt love for the natural world.

I've lived and worked with people for whom "environmentalist" is a dirty word, a synonym for either evil intent or dangerous naïveté. People can't hurt my feelings by calling me that any more than they could by calling me a woman. It's just what I am. Add a few choice adjectives in front - call me a "Commie-loving, tree-hugging, granola-crunching environmentalist" - and all I can do is shrug. I don't know any Communists, but I have indeed hugged trees. It was summer in Montana, and the scent of those cedars was finer than perfume. If the name-callers had been there, they would have hugged a few trees, too. As for granola-crunching, they have me on that one. Is it a problem?

Being a self-confessed "tree-hugger" isn't a judgment I pass on other people, though I know sometimes they take it that way. For me, it's just how I live. I recycle. I take shorter showers. I turn the lights off when I leave a room. And yes, I care about what other people do, because little actions add up to big consequences. But that doesn't mean I go around preaching about it. If these actions make sense, we'll all do them someday. It will happen the only way it can happen - naturally.

In the 20 years since my Montana summer, I've discovered (surprise!) that environmental issues sometimes come in shades of gray. It's easy to write a letter saying "Let's stop clear-cutting the forests of southeast Alaska." It's harder to think about what happens if we do. There still will be a market for wood pulp. Where will it come from? In the Philippines, they don't have the same environmental protections in place. Why is it not okay to cut a forest I've walked through, but okay to cut somewhere else? What if the people who live there enjoy walking through those forests just as much as I enjoy hiking through mine? I miss the black-and-white clarity of youth.

Being a nature girl was simpler when it meant running around Yosemite, talking to the ghost of John Muir about getting rid of all the cars polluting our beloved valley. Now when I read the news, it's a struggle to understand immense threats like global warming and complex questions like oil drilling in the Arctic, which affect security and the economy as well as the environment. I still speak up, but I know the answers are complicated and there may not be a single "right" way to go.

Some aspects of loving nature are emotionally painful. There's always cause to believe the world is going to end. If overpopulation doesn't crowd every other creature off the planet first, pollution will poison us all, and if the by-products of nuclear energy don't irradiate us accidentally, global warming will turn the planet into an unlivable hell. To sense impending tragedy around every corner is exhausting. It's like seeing someone dear to you mugged as you stand by, helpless.

Fortunately, one thing that hasn't changed for this grown-up nature girl is the inspiration and connection I feel whenever I go outside. This summer, I camped along a river in British Columbia. The days were hot, but the Stamp River, wide and cool, welcomed me as the Merced once did. I passed the hours jumping in and out of the water. When not swimming, I would sit on a rock in the shade, painting a watercolor or reading or just watching sunlight dance across the water's surface.

The days drifted by in that slow, delicious way summers did when I was a girl. At night, fir trees whispered in the breeze, their voices mingling with the river's sigh. Camping beside the Stamp River, I slept deeply and my dreams were peaceful. They say you sleep best when you're in a safe place where you feel at home. I was, and I did.

Julie Hammonds is a freelance writer and the associate editor of a wildlife magazine. If a nature girl has to grow up and get a job, hers is the one to have. Read more at juliehammonds.com.