Meet Your Peers: Tim Kukes

Well, let's see if I can give some reasonable information about myself without making this sound like a dating profile. I graduated from Central Washington University in the winter of 2008 with a degree in geography. During the last two years of my undergraduate career, I got the opportunity to be on the staff of the Observer – Central's weekly student newspaper. This experience created a love for writing for other people. In addition, I have worked at several jobs over the course of the last ten years that have involved natural resources.

I believe there is a magic in what we call the environment or nature. No hocus-pocus; just a pervading sense of rightness with the world. Nature is balance. It goes with the flow and it works with what is has. It doesn't surprise me that people feel a calmness or sense of being at one with themselves when in the woods or mountains. Nature provides an example of being.

You can even see it driving across Eastern Washington on I-90. A landscape that many would describe as desolate still catches my eye. Large expanses of land dotted by sagebrush or farm fields, broken by a periodic outcropping of basalt is the theme of this area. Yet you can't help but be drawn into the solidness of it all. There is a feeling of permanence to it that I find grounding.

And that is what has drawn me to pursue a graduate degree in journalism. It is a way to do something I love while paying homage to the natural environment we live in. I keep having the recurring idea that the health of a society is reflected in the health of the environment it lives in – both natural and cultural. That is what I want to talk about.

So if the above three paragraphs don't tell you I am something of a romantic, then I do not know what will. In addition to writing and being outdoors I enjoy reading, eating out, traveling, and exploring new places. I am also an avid gamer, mostly rpg's – both computer and tabletop – but I also enjoy various tabletop strategy games.

I view this move to Missoula and the University of Montana as an opportunity, not only to further myself academically, but to develop myself as a human being through the experiences I will have there. I am looking forward to it and to meeting you all.