I am Patty Brown and I have lived in Haines for 28 years. From 1995-2017, I taught middle school science in the K-12 school and also had stints where I taught fourth grade, middle school math, natural resources, PE, and Spanish. Before I was a teacher I was a park ranger for 20 years in California and in Alaska. Noticing and knowing plants always has made me feel more grounded and more connected to the place. It stimulates my curiosity when I see plants I have never seen before and when I see familiar ones growing in a place that surprises me. One year I climbed the highest peak in Costa Rica and hiking through one section, I saw a plant community that closely resembled that of the foothills of California where I had grown up. At the peak at 10,000 feet, bamboo was growing!
