My love for whisky started when I went to college in Iowa with my friend, Jenny. We learned that all bad ass conservationists have to drink whisky, so we learned to deal with the burn of whisky and have stumbled our way forward ever since.

In college, we also learned a lot about how what we call “natural disasters” are really just big ecological disturbances that are really important. Over the years, our country has suppressed fires and floods so we could build out our human communities. Sadly, this has just made these disturbances even more severe, and it has big ecological implications. With climate change further fueling wild fires and historic floods, we should ask if there’s a silver lining in all of this? Is this an opportunity (albeit a big and nasty looking one) to restore some lost functionality to these systems?