Sitting on a moss covered log, I wait in the tranquil woods. With beautiful October maple trees around me, wind whispering through the trees, and leaves gliding across the forest floor, I can see why this location could be a dream. Eventually, from afar, a white haired woman appears, practically dressed and pacing herself through the forest, looking and listening. The woman, Mary Willson, eventually reaches me and we begin speaking, interrupted only by the wind, the birds, and the rustling of trees.
As a child, Mary Willson was raised by parents that inspired and accepted her love of “books, reading, and running around…” The thoughtful woman explains, recalling details of a child over half a century past. “They supported my love of learning…show more content… She became a professor at the University of Illinois, and worked there for 25 years with her husband. “I hated it there,” she recalls. So when her husband died in 1989, she decided to quit her job. “I was used to a flat, old, drained swamp. I lived in a place just filled with farm fields. It was pancake flat, and filled with corn and soybeans as far as the eye could see. Why should I stay when I could work outdoors, with animals and birds?” When she decided this, she was given two job offers. ‘The first job was teaching, as a department head. But I didn’t want that, because it would mean I’d only be a regular professor with double the teaching load. My other job was an offer with the Feds, in Alaska. I had the opportunity to change and innovate how the Feds worked.’ So she packed her bags and headed to Juneau, Alaska. Her face lights up when she begins talking about her early years getting used to her home. “ My first winter in Alaska there was a blue sky above me, and I drove up and down the road, and just thought to myself, ‘is it real?’” And she truly loved her work with the Forest Service. She was able to work in the field, mostly with other bird ecologists. “There had been nothing done in Alaska really, so it felt like my own personal
