Nurturing our Connection to the Outdoors with Louise Ba⁠⁠My name is Louise Ba and I am a senior at St. Catherine University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I am from Minneapolis, but my family is originally from Senegal. As a Political Science, Economics, and Public Policy major, it is not easy for me to find ways to connect nature and the outdoors into my career, but I’ve learned to integrate it into my lifestyle. To do this, I joined the Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa (CCM) the summers of my sophomore and junior years of high school, and learned valuable life lessons. Bryn Mawr Park, often referred to as Theodore Wirth Park, became a place that I could return to time after time, when making the 2.5 hour drive up to Saint Croix State Park at any time in the year was not accessible to me. The experiences that I had at CCM that brought me peace weren’t always easily and readily available. I couldn’t jump into the water off of Bear Island, or be cocooned by trees with massive trunks and branches that stretched into the sky, or spend early mornings doing yoga and centering exercises. What I could do, however, was wake up and stroll along the long stretches of trail and bike path crossing the river and weaving through the beautiful forest at Bryn Mawr. I could fish with my family with only fishing line and corn as bait, and somehow still manage to catch multiple fish, pictured above. I could sit and stare at the water, and feel that same sense of peace as I inhaled the fresh air, and let the memories flow in. Bryn Mawr is like a little pocket of CCM that I can hold on to and feel at peace with, and I am so grateful to it for enabling me to nurture my connection with the natural world.⁠⁠ Read Louise's full story via the link in bio.