The Evolution of the Sierra Speaker Series, with Jeremy Lin
This is a 14-minute listen.
Following the grand opening of the Donner Memorial State Park Visitor Center in 2015, the Sierra Speaker Series was launched in 2016 as a training program for volunteer docents. Over the years, it has grown to a larger, more formal format, allowing subject matter experts to hold conversations with the community about sensitive topics covering the rich natural and cultural history of the Sierra Nevada region.
We hear from Jeremy Lin, who represented California State Parks for insight into the evolution of the Sierra Speaker Series, and what we can learn from this development.
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Full Transcript:
Sierra State Parks Foundation, host: [00:00:00] Welcome listeners. We're recording from Truckee, California today. I'm your host Denise with the Sierra State Parks Foundation. Joining us today is Jeremy Lin, District Interpreter Manager and State Park Interpreter III with California State Parks. Hi Jeremy.
Jeremy Lin: Hello. Thanks for having me.
Sierra State Parks Foundation: So the Sierra Speaker Series, created back in 2016, with the goal of connecting folks to the rich cultural and natural history of the area, has over the years, had topics have ranged from musicians performing their originals about the Donner Party to mountain lions and prominent local history figures to even the forensic study done at significant locations related to the Donner Party.
We'll be continuing the conversation with Jeremy who joined us around 2020. Is that correct, Jeremy?
Jeremy Lin: [00:01:00] Yep. That's it.
Sierra State Parks Foundation: So you've had about five years watching the evolution happen and I would argue it was really challenged to grow in the last three or four years. So before we dive into your thoughts, would you mind sharing your background with us?
Jeremy Lin: I've been with California State Parks for about 10 years now, and I started in the Santa Cruz District where I led backpacking programs and coordinated educational programs at several of those parks. So Big Basin Redwood State Park and on Nuevo State Park. And I moved up to Truckee and started working out of the Lake Tahoe Parks in 2020.
At that time, we had a pretty minimal interpretive program just in general because of Covid and things were really scaled back. We didn't have a lot of volunteers and so starting then we just started to improve things and build upon things [00:02:00] and we have a lot more programs and things have improved and diversified and we've come a long way since 2020.
Sierra State Parks Foundation: The pandemic was a blessing in disguise, if you will, for the series because having to scale back, it gave us a moment to reflect on how we wanted to move forward. And you were with State Parks before in Santa Cruz, you said. Did you have any similar programs to this that you've managed before? Or was this something that was new for you and what were your initial thoughts on the series?
Jeremy Lin: Yeah, good question. In Santa Cruz, we didn't have any of these formal speaker series. We had a lot of presentations. We had experts come in to talk about their research, on wildlife management like mountain lion research.
We had a lot of experts in their fields, cultural and natural resource experts talk about things, but as far as I know, [00:03:00] we didn't have anything like the Sierra Speaker Series where it's very formal. We're reaching out to different experts in their field and having them present in, I guess like a theater kind of format, other programs that State Parks does are typically around a campfire, smaller, sometimes more informal.
But this seems to bring the feel of the presentations to more of like an academic and more elegant type feel where we're providing some snacks and The Foundation provides some red wine to accompany. So this is definitely different than some of the other programs that I've been involved in before.
Sierra State Parks Foundation: It feels like the formal setting is also paying respect to these speakers that we're bringing in. They're at this higher academic level, and we're inviting the public to hear the presenters on their topic. Would you say that it's [00:04:00] still welcoming?
Jeremy Lin: Oh yes, absolutely these are very welcoming. And even though the venue's a little bit different than a traditional campfire program or a guided walk or something that's happening outdoors, it also provides for accessibility. Sometimes people cannot get outside to some of these areas or go on a walk or a snowshoe tour or a mountain bike tour based on accessibility or, other barriers like financial barriers or the ability to get up to the parks to do these things.
This provides an easily accessible way to experience some of these cool park related fields and scholarly academic papers that people are presenting based on research. So it's it's a welcoming environment for folks.
Sierra State Parks Foundation: For listeners at home who don't have the context, these talks take place in the Visitor Center at Donner Memorial State Park, which also offers flexibility in terms of weather and it's more [00:05:00] accessible. Okay, moving on. What are your thoughts on the evolution of the series over the years?
Jeremy Lin: When I first arrived at Donner, there was a speaker series, but it was very minimal and it was usually existing volunteers reiterating their guided tours.
So it wasn't really much different than a historical tour that they might lead to the Murphy Cabin site or the Pioneer Monument, or around the historical grounds at Donner Memorial State Park. It was very much scaled down and informal and just reiterating existing guiding tours.
Not to say that they weren't enjoyable, and fun, and informative but there wasn't really much diversity in the speakers and in the content. It was very much focusing on westward expansion, wagon trains, and the kind of pioneer era of the United States. So it didn't really branch out to anything more [00:06:00] than that.
As I was in my role in coordinating the educational programs at Donner Memorial State Park in the kind of region, we wanted to expand these stories. We wanted to bring in underrepresented stories. We wanted to bring in other speakers, also speakers from outside the area. Prior to 2020, it was just kind of speakers that were living around the area.
This expanded the vision of this to bring in cool research and other speakers from other parts and other states. So we really just did a whole revamp and re-look at this entire program.
Sierra State Parks Foundation: Over the years we've invited more people to the table, in terms of planning these talks and with that we've really been able to tap into different networks and bring a more elevated level of presenters. What direction would you like to see the series move in? [00:07:00] Because it's gonna continue to evolve, right?
Jeremy Lin: Yeah, absolutely. Some of the speakers I'm really excited that we've been able to host recently really high caliber, diverse speakers that include experts on the railroad Chinese. Professor Sue Fawn Chung presented on that.
She is an academic scholar, probably one of the foremost experts on the railroad Chinese. So it was fantastic to have her perspective on this and all of the breadth of her research, which is extremely relevant to the park that we hadn't really focused on in the recent past where the Transcontinental Railroad goes pretty much right through the park.
So it's salient to our interpretive vision and our goal, and what we have are park resources. So she was able to highlight and illuminate this rich history of people that contributed not only to Donner Memorial State Park, but the United States, in codifying United States as a world power through this Transcontinental Railroad.
[00:08:00] Based on the work of the railroad Chinese who built this section of railroad through the most difficult, challenging part of the entire railroad system, which was the Sierra Nevada mountains, blasting through the granite and all their stories. That was a really fascinating story that she was able to tell, and that just gives these different perspectives on things that we haven't really been focusing on before.
We've also been able to host Wildlife Biologists. Serena Simons, our Bear Biologist for this Sierra District of California State Parks, she talked about all of her work on researching bears and bear-human interactions, bear behavior and bear health, and she showed pictures of her actually tagging bears, and doing research on them and doing blood tests and assessing their health. So that was a cool presentation that she was able to do. We've also had indigenous representation. Mitchell Cruz presented from the tribe, Herman Fillmore, presented from the tribe. So [00:09:00] far we've been able to get some high caliber, fascinating speakers that are subject matter experts in their fields.
Sierra State Parks Foundation: What I'm hearing is let's continue to bring in as many diverse voices and backgrounds as we can because these stories are important. Is there a talk that you're looking forward to for this year?
Jeremy Lin: I'm glad you brought that up. Yes. There's actually several the first one that comes to mind because we're getting all this snowy weather currently up in the Sierra Nevada is Bryan Allegretto.
And for the folks who don't know about Brian Allegretto, he's our local meteorologist on Open Snow, which provides all this great climatic data and meteorological predictions based on some of the forecasting models about the weather that we're gonna expect. So he has this super high pressure job of looking up at all these weather models and distilling and interpreting those into forecasts for what we can expect in terms of winter [00:10:00] weather.
And the reason I say it's high pressure is because he's the one who's advising people about traveling conditions and road conditions. So he's trying to dial in the specifics on the weather and forecasting when we're gonna get snow, when we're gonna get ice, when the roads are gonna be safe to travel.
And so he has this important job because everyone wants to travel up for skiing. People want to go snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. He's one of the main meteorologists for this region, so he's gonna talk about his strategies in reading models and his predictions, and also just his role as a human being in living up in the area and giving people advice about traveling and what they can predict in terms of snow patterns.
I'm also looking forward to Chairman Ron W. Goode of the North Fork Mono Tribe. So he is a Cultural Burning Advisor for indigenous tribes in the region, and he's gonna discuss his strategies for forest [00:11:00] management and wildfire resilience from an indigenous perspective.
In California as many of us know, we're experiencing pretty intense wildfires and the indigenous folks in this state and in the region have been managing the forest for thousands, tens of thousands of years, and we've moved away from some of these indigenous cultural practices of cultural burning and forest management that they've been doing for such a long time.
So he is going to be bringing that indigenous perspective on how they decide on cultural burns, how they assess cultural burns, how they choose the right areas, and all the academic research that historical, traditional, ecological knowledge that he's bringing into, or that the tribes are bringing into the modern forest management.
Sierra State Parks Foundation: Jeremy, I can just tell you're such an amazing interpreter because you got me excited for these talks. Just like [00:12:00] the level of depth that you're able to naturally free flow, talk about these topics how you break it down and all that, like it makes it so digestible and exciting.
There is something that I thought about just hearing you talk the goal of the speaker series is to connect folks to the rich cultural and natural history of the area, but why as an Interpreter, do you think this is important?
Jeremy Lin: That's a great question. Our public lands, especially California State Parks, are for the people.
It is our responsibility to bring people into the park system and have people enjoy our natural and cultural resources. I also think that people interacting with our parks creates a healthier environment. There's a lot of studies that link mental and physical health to people having experiences outdoors, and feeling comfortable in the [00:13:00] parks. I see that as our job is to welcome people in making people feel comfortable to enjoy the fresh air and the trees and understand a little bit about nature and just have an enjoyable time, whether it's by themselves on a hike or exploring doing some birding, or the bringing their families into the parks.
And I think bringing communities out into the parks and into these wild places is just overall a good thing for human beings. It's a point of pride for myself and other parks staff and our Sierra State Parks Foundation folks to welcome people into the outdoors so they can gain inspiration and health.
Sierra State Parks Foundation: Couldn't have said it better myself. Your work, California State Park's role is so important and very appreciated.
Jeremy Lin: I also wanna shout out say thanks to the Sierra State Parks Foundation for partnering with us on this, because none of this would be possible without our valuable partners who are doing so much to make [00:14:00] sure that we're creating these resources and collaborating and creating these opportunities for people to enjoy the parks.
Sierra State Parks Foundation: Thank you. And also shout out to the Nevada County. They're a new recent partner that's been helping us too.
Jeremy Lin: Yeah, and the library system in Nevada County too.
Sierra State Parks Foundation: Thank you so much for your time, Jeremy.
Jeremy Lin: Thanks.
