About Walk Well & Wild

Walk Well & Wild started with a much simpler idea than all of this.

In the summer of 2025, I was thinking about creating a professional Instagram account—a place where I could share my wildlife research, photography, fieldwork, and some of the accomplishments and experiences that were beginning to shape my career.

The problem was that I couldn’t figure out what to call it.

I didn’t want to build something like Edward the Ecologist or Tomassetti Wildlife. There’s nothing wrong with those kinds of names, but they felt too narrow. Wildlife biology is a huge part of who I am, but it isn’t the only part. The more I thought about building a professional “brand,” the more I realized that my professional identity really isn’t that different from my personal one.

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Walk

Walking may be the most basic form of human movement.

It’s how we get somewhere. It’s how we move forward. A long walk can clear your head, improve your health, carry you through a city, or take you miles into the backcountry. Almost everything about walking implies movement and direction.

For me, Walk begins with something deeper: my walk with God.

My faith is supposed to be the foundation beneath everything else I do. When I feel close to God, I am a better version of myself—more patient, more grateful, more disciplined, more compassionate, and generally better equipped to handle the rest of life. I have yet to find an exception to that.

Walking with God doesn’t mean knowing exactly where I’m going.

Quite the opposite.

It means trusting Him with the direction of my life even when I can’t see very far down the trail. It means trying to keep moving forward, allowing myself to be redirected, and recognizing that my plans probably won’t unfold exactly the way I imagine them.

There’s also something I like about the simplicity of the word walk.

We can walk for our health. We can walk into the wild. We can walk alongside other people.

And we can walk in faith.

Well

Well came from my constant pursuit of wellness.

And I mean wellness in the broadest sense of the word.

Physical health. Mental health. Spiritual health. Relationships. Nutrition. Exercise. Sleep. Recovery. Discipline. Balance. Learning when to push harder and learning when to back off.

Movement is probably the piece I struggle with and think about most. I know how much better I feel when I’m training regularly, walking more, eating well, sleeping enough, and taking care of myself. I also know how quickly those things can disappear when work gets busy.

What fascinates me about wellness is how much of it can be approached scientifically.

I consume a ridiculous amount of wellness research. I want to know what the evidence says about exercise, nutrition, recovery, behavior, performance, and longevity. It’s funny to me that science became one of the major influences on this part of my life even though wellness isn’t my profession.

But knowing what the science says and actually doing it every day are two completely different things.

That distinction matters.

I’m not writing about wellness because I have it figured out. I’m interested in it because I don’t.

I’m constantly trying to find the balance between discipline and sustainability—between working hard and recovering, between enjoying life and taking care of myself, between knowing what I should do and actually doing it consistently.

Some weeks I’m dialed in.

Other weeks…not so much.

That’s part of the process too.

Wild

Wild is probably the easiest part of the name to connect to my professional life.

I’m a wildlife biologist. I study animals, populations, movement, ecology, and the ways we can better understand wildlife so that we can make better decisions about conserving it.

But Wild means more to me than wildlife biology.

It means trying to live closer to our natural roots.

So much of modern life takes place indoors, behind glass, underneath artificial light, and in front of screens. We’ve become incredibly good at bringing pieces of the natural world inside with us. We hang photographs of landscapes on the walls. We fill our homes with plants. Animals that were once wild now sleep at the foot of our beds.

Maybe some part of us knows what we’re missing.

Because whenever I actually get outside—feet on the ground, sun on my skin, wind moving through the trees, water running nearby—something changes.

I feel healthier.

I feel more present.

And I feel closer to God.

Wild places are where I most clearly recognize creation as something beyond us. Mountains, forests, rivers, deserts, oceans, wildlife—none of these exist because we designed them. We are simply lucky enough to experience them.

That connection is also where much of my compassion for wildlife comes from.

Wild animals don’t get to sit at a table and argue for their own conservation. They don’t get a vote. They don’t write management plans or attend public meetings.

People have to choose whether they matter.

I want my career to contribute, in some small way, to being one of those voices—to help understand wildlife well enough that these animals and the places they depend on remain here for the people who come after us.

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Anchored in Science

Science runs through almost every part of Walk Well & Wild.

It is my profession, obviously. Wildlife research is how I spend most of my working life.

But science also influences how I think about wellness, how I evaluate information, and even how I understand the natural world around me.

Science gives us a way to ask questions about that world and slowly begin figuring out how pieces of it work.

And I don’t see science and faith as opposing forces.

I have questions about both. Plenty of them.

But, for me, they are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Understanding more about how an animal moves, how a landscape formed, how the human body responds to exercise, or how an ecosystem functions doesn’t make any of those things less remarkable.

Usually it does the opposite.

The more I learn, the more complicated—and incredible—the world becomes.

A Work in Progress

There is one thing I want to be especially clear about.

Walk Well & Wild represents what I strive for, not what I consistently achieve.

You may read something here about faith and think:

Edward, I heard you cussing and complaining last week.

Fair.

You may read something about wellness and remember that I drank a couple too many beers, went to the gym once that week, ate more than I needed to, and spent approximately seventeen consecutive hours attached to a computer.

Also fair.

And I might write about how alive I feel outdoors while simultaneously realizing that I barely stepped outside for three days because I was buried in data, emails, grading, or code.

All of those things can be true.

I go through seasons where I feel incredibly dialed into my faith, and seasons where I wander a little farther off the trail. The same thing happens with exercise, nutrition, relationships, work-life balance, and just about everything else.

I know many of the things that make me feel better.

Doing them consistently is another challenge entirely.

That is probably why these words resonate with me in the first place.

They aren’t a declaration that I’ve arrived.

They’re reminders of the direction I’m trying to walk.

So What Is This Place?

For now, Walk Well & Wild is primarily my professional home on the internet.

It’s a place to share my wildlife research, projects, publications, presentations, photography, fieldwork, and the work I’m creating as I continue developing as a scientist.

But I want it to leave room for everything surrounding that work too.

The trips. The adventures. The lessons. The failures. The photographs. The occasional wellness rabbit hole. The thoughts that show up while sitting beside a river or driving home from the field.

Part of that is professional.

Part of it is personal.

And part of it is simply an attempt to stay connected.

A Ph.D. has a funny way of consuming nearly every available hour. Research, fieldwork, data management, classes, teaching, writing, professional development—and then somewhere around all of that you still try to make time for family, friends, exercise, groceries, cooking, sleep, prayer, journaling, and occasionally doing absolutely nothing.

Sometimes things slip.

Texts go unanswered. Phone calls get postponed. Months start moving faster than expected.

I hope this site becomes one way of sharing what I’m doing and where life is taking me, especially with people I don’t get to see nearly enough.

And maybe it reaches some people I haven’t met yet too.

Wherever It Goes

People ask me all the time where I see myself in five years or ten years.

I never have a particularly satisfying answer.

I have goals. I have things I would love to accomplish. I have a general direction I’m moving.

But I don’t have a perfectly mapped-out destination.

Life changes.

Opportunities appear.

Plans fall apart.

And I’ll change too.

As long as I keep working hard, keep moving toward something worthwhile, remain open to where God is leading me, and stay true to the things that matter to me, I think I’ll be alright.

I feel the same way about Walk Well & Wild.

I have no idea what this site will look like a year from now, much less ten.

And I think I like it that way.

For now, it’s simply a place where I can share my work, document some adventures, follow a few wandering thoughts, and continue figuring things out as I go.

I’m not asking anyone else to Walk Well & Wild.

I’m just trying to.

And if something here encourages someone else along the way, that’s a pretty great bonus.

Thanks for being here!

— Edward