Barbara J. Moritsch
Ecologist and Author
A Bit About Me...
EARLY DAYS
I was born in Sacramento, California, and have lived in places up and down that state, as well as in Oregon and Idaho. For as long as I can remember I’ve had three driving passions: horses, wild nature, and books. After seeing “HORSE” at the top of my Christmas list every year, my parents bought me my first horse when I was ten—a strawberry roan gelding named Shortcake. At seventeen I started working at a large horse ranch in California—Varian Arabians. The love of nature and wildness grew out of numerous family camping trips to state and national parks in California.
EDUCATION & INSPIRATION
Concurrent with working at Varian’s, I attended Allan Hancock College and participated in two weeklong field courses: one in Death Valley and one on the California coast. Those courses, along with an Environmental Science class and camping in Yosemite National Park, convinced me I wanted to be a park ranger/naturalist.
In 1980, I started a degree program in Natural Resource Planning and Interpretation at Humbolt State University and was selected as an intern at Sequoia National Park for the winter of 1981/82. It was the experience of a lifetime—guiding park visitors on ski tours and snowshoe walks, while learning and teaching the natural and human history of giant Sequoia trees and the Sierra Nevada range. It laid the foundation for my career.
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE & MORE EDUCATION
For the next 25 years, I worked for the U.S. National Park Service in Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Death Valley, Yosemite, and Point Reyes in positions that included horse patrol ranger, interpretive ranger-naturalist, biologist, ecological restoration specialist, and plant ecologist. I also secured a master’s degree at Oregon State University, taught outdoor education for Multnomah County, Oregon, and was employed as a botanist and project manager for two environmental consulting firms.
YOSEMITE
In 2002 I was managing the vegetation management program at Point Reyes National Seashore when my fiancé, Tom Nichols, was offered a job as Fire Management Officer in Yosemite. The offer included housing in Yosemite Valley—a dream come true. I was hired as a biologist with Yosemite’s Division of Resources Management.
In 2003, Tom and I were married in a pagan ceremony in the Yosemite Valley chapel. An hour before the wedding, I encountered a group of five coyotes bedded down beneath black oak trees not far from our home. I invited them to the wedding. After the ceremony, according to custom, we rang the church bell. We stepped out of the chapel and were greeted with a wild response: a group of coyotes, howling their approval.
OFF TO IDAHO
In 2005, Tom, our Australian Shepherd pup Cali, and I left Yosemite Valley and moved to Boise, Idaho to follow Tom’s career in National Park Service fire management. There were no national parks close to Boise, so I dove into writing about my experiences in Yosemite. A new neighbor convinced me to take dressage riding lessons with her, which drew me back into horse ownership. While in Idaho, between 2008 and 2018, Tom and I (with a lot of help) rescued 30 horses, most of whom were on their way to slaughter, and adopted two more “best” dogs and four cats.
WAKE-UP CALL
I fell and broke my lower back while trying out a horse for sale in 2007. The injury was a wake-up call: Life is short; don’t wait to do the things you want to do. So, I vowed to finish my book, The Soul of Yosemite; take courses from a writer I deeply admired, Natalie Goldberg; and attend a workshop at Esalen with a shamanic teacher whose books had captured my imagination, Hank Wesselman. I did all three and was so intrigued with shamanism I completed several more workshops with Hank and his wife, Jill Kuykendall. The shamanic work inspired my novels, Wolf Time and Lion Time.
AFRICA
My first visit to Africa happened in 1995, when I spent five weeks in Kenya with ten biologist friends. Ten years later I spent a month on safari in Tanzania. In 2015, I joined a Zoo Boise group to travel to Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique and to Kruger in South Africa. Three years later, I went back to Kenya to visit the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust’s elephant orphanage and reintegration camps, and to spend several days in Maasai Mara. The extraordinary people, wildlife, and landscapes of Kenya captured me. I’ve returned six times and will continue to visit for as long as I am able.
To be written:
Shamanism, Horse rescue, Resumed travels to Africa
