Embrace the WILD in You

Welcome fellow geology enthusiasts! I’m Marissa and I’ve created this blog for those who share a deep passion for travel and geology! My passion for geology started when I learned to walk. I’d find the shiniest rocks in the yard and bring them home. Growing up in the Inland Empire of Southern California right below the Sierra Nevada mountain range, I was always fascinated by the towering mountains behind my yard. Everything was within an hour’s drive from us: Palm Desert to the east, Mt Baldy and Big Bear to the North, Los Angeles and the Los Angeles National Forest to the West, and of course the beaches to the southwest of us. Being surrounded by different topography and landscapes fed my love for nature and my curiosity of how the world worked.

My father shared the same wonders as I did and we would stay up late watching Naked Science episodes on Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Natural Disasters along with archaeological excavations and paleontological finds. National Geographic was a large part of my childhood thanks to my dad. He had a subscription to their magazine and I would pour over those pages looking at the pictures and trying to absorb the articles, even though as a child I didn’t understand what the articles were saying. It wasn’t until I got older where the science started becoming clearer.

I have to credit my dad for my love of the outdoors, my passion for science and geology, and the wanderlust I only discovered when I started my geology education in college. My dad was a banker, not an outdoors man but it was my exposure to the backyard flowers, the small handheld hikes, the two times we had gone camping with the family, where I would take in all of my dad’s exclamations of the beauty around me that nurtured this seed in me as a child.

I went to California State University, San Bernardino as a Creative Writing English major. Having found a love for writing in High School and never actually knowing what geology was, I decided on a path to novel writing. Two and a half years into my college career and one semester away from graduating, I took the introduction to geology class as a means to get rid of my physical science capstone. I only took this class so that I didn’t have to take physics, chemistry or biology. I didn’t know what geology was but the description said volcanoes and I was sold. Day one of Spring 2012, and I was completely in love with geology. Knowing I would have to spend three more years in school and would have to take physics, chemistry AND biology, I switched my major to Geology at the end of Spring 2012. I entered the following semester as a Geology major with an English minor.

Now, sitting here 10 years later, I can honestly say this was the best decision I have ever made. I am sitting here, aged 32, in Ventura County as a geologist working for a privately owned consulting firm and spending most of my paychecks on adventures and rent. I went to California State University, Los Angeles for my Masters in Environmental Hydrogeology while I worked as a paleontologist only to work my way to the dream career I’ve always wanted. I started this blog with the need to share this passion with you all in the hopes that I inspire someone out there to get outside!