|
“I would pretend to be an Indian,” she says laughing, “and draw little maps of all the different eco zones. I was crazy about butterflies, so I would spend hours watching and trying to catch them – unsuccessfully.”
Turned off to science by bad experiences in school, Jennifer nevertheless was a keen observer of nature, “where the butterflies laid their eggs, all sorts of things.”
Those early experiences were formative – “very vivid memories, just from this little bit of open land” – building a love of nature and the basis of a deep conservation ethic that has grown over the years.
Love of nature proved to be a saving grace when Jennifer moved to Durham from Boston in 1976, a few years after graduating from Smith College.
“I was actually pretty miserable for a while,” she remembers. “I missed living at the foot of Beacon Hill, watching the great ships and the queen go by and all of the culture of Boston. But the consolation was it was so easy to go camping, to go exploring. Just wandering along the streambeds. The mountains were close. The ocean was close. And so I did a lot of that.”
Raven Rock State Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Joyce Kilmer Forest, the Slick Rock Wilderness and camping at the Outer Banks were all favorites “at a time I had the luxury of going farther afield,” Jennifer said.
“When life got busier then the day trips became really important – to go to Eno River, to Umstead Park. And then to White Pines and to Johnston Mill; the TLC holdings became really important, too.”
Jennifer worked for several years in downtown Durham then in 1980 entered Duke Law School. After graduating, Jennifer practiced briefly with a law firm before putting her two young children before her career. Soon, the law school called and asked her to teach a course, then added more responsibilities.
She’s been at Duke since 1987, and is now Assistant Dean for International Studies and a Senior Lecturing Fellow. One of the perks of her position is an annual trip to Geneva, Switzerland, where she runs the Duke-Geneva Institute in Transnational Law every July, a welcome change in scenery.
“I’ve never gotten used to the summer in North Carolina after all these years,” Jennifer said. “It’s too hot for me, so it’s really nice to be somewhere else in July.”
Like anybody who’s been in the Triangle for 30-plus years, Jennifer has noticed the changes. For a keen observer of nature, they’ve hit close to home – literally and figuratively.
“I’ve seen what I consider pretty devastating changes in the Triangle, starting with my previous neighborhood in Raleigh. When I moved in, it had open space along Crabtree Creek that was full of wildflowers and a little path through it. In the time that I lived there that land was sold off, houses were built on pilings – it was clearly not good land, it was within the 100 year floodplain – and then the people who built the houses cleared down to the creek and turned this very little wild place into another suburban lawn.”
Continued...
Page 1 - Page 2
Back |
