Sierra Club Stories: Julia Jorgensen

Dwelling in a House of One Room

By Julia Jorgensen

How did I become an environmentalist?  This kind of thing is never a simple story.

I spent much of my childhood in a big yard and garden on the outskirts of a small town in Texas, but I proceeded to live in seven other states before returning to Texas.  I got graduate degrees in Cognitive Science and Anthropology, and I’ve taught for nearly thirty years.

One important thing I learned from Anthropology is that our early ancestors did not view their own lives as existing separately from the lives of the forests, grasslands, deserts, streams, and oceans that surrounded them.  As John…