Now?

Apparently it has been more than two years since I updated this page, which feels both impossible and completely accurate.

I’m still living in Boulder City, Nevada, with my husband, Keith, and our cat, Pai, tucked between Lake Mead, the Mojave Desert, and the City of Sin, Las Vegas. Moving here in 2023 remains one of the best decisions we’ve made. The desert still feels like home in a way few places ever have, even when it is 115 degrees and the sun feels like it is somehow inside of you.

The last couple of years have been full—sometimes beautifully full, sometimes just plain too full. My family also experienced a devastating loss in 2025, and much of the past year has involved learning how to carry grief while regular life keeps moving forward around it.

I’ve continued working throughout the Southwest as a wildlife biologist, spending time with many of the desert and riparian species that first made me want to do this work. I’ve surveyed for endangered birds along the Muddy River, searched for desert tortoises and burrowing owls, led avian surveys on renewable-energy projects, and trapped and handled small mammals in the Nevada desert. I’ve also been volunteering at desert tortoise wellness and microchipping clinics, which has meant more time with the desert’s reigning mascot of scaly cuteness.

More recently, I dove into the world of bats and learned how to set up acoustic monitoring equipment. It is incredibly cool to drive around at night with a microphone poking out of your truck, recording bat echolocation calls in real time and watching them appear on the computer screen as the bats fly overhead.

Photography is still woven through all of it.

I continue to photograph weddings, families, wildlife, desert landscapes, and the night sky—although not always as often as I would like. Some of my favorite recent photography has come from the overlap between my worlds: documenting wildlife work, photographing people who care deeply about desert species, and carrying a camera into places I probably would have explored anyway.

One night while camping alone for fieldwork, I pulled out my camera, grabbed some colorful lights, set up a long exposure, and made self-portraits of myself wildly dancing in the desert. There was no client, no plan to advertise them, and nothing I needed to sell. I was just alone in the middle of nowhere, making something because it sounded fun. It felt surprisingly freeing to use my camera entirely for myself again.

That is something I’m still working on. Corporate consulting has a way of measuring nearly everything in hours, deliverables, and business opportunities, and I don’t want to start viewing every interesting thing I do through the lens of whether it can become productive or profitable.

Outside of work, I’m trying—still—to remember that not every interest needs to become another job. Keith and I have continued traveling whenever life allows, usually toward wildlife, water, mountains, or some combination of the three. I’ve been snorkeling and diving, birding in new places, going to concerts, dancing, and trying to spend more time simply enjoying the desert that convinced us to move here.

I’m still dreaming about longer trails and slower travel. I still stop whatever I’m doing when something interesting flies overhead. And I am still working on making room for the things that make me feel most like myself: wildlife, photography, art, movement, wild places, and the people I love.