From Yucca to Yarrow: Jordan Bridges Environmentalism and the Humanities

It was during a hike up to the top of East Rock Park, on one of those rare occasions when we could leave our Branford college bubble, that I started to really know Jordan Akers. It was the first time either of us had climbed up the steep, narrow stone steps; I was taken aback by how much Jordan knew about the vegetation that we encountered along the way. “That there is a Yucca plant, and the tree over there is likely an Oak,” he would nonchalantly mention throughout the trip. It was then that I decided to interview him – to find out where this knowledge had come from and what we, as a broader public, could learn from it.

Jordan Akers (he/him), Branford ’24, began his journey with a book: The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka. He described the book as an inspiration to get involved with more environmental causes as it taught him about sustainable agriculture and fostered in him a more holistic environmental philosophy than those that he had encountered in previous readings. Fast forward to the summer of 2019, during which Jordan got involved with a variety of sustainable agriculture projects in the Midwest.

Amidst expansive herb gardens, Jordan completed an apprenticeship at Bluebird Hill Homestead in Hudson, Wisconsin. He worked alongside Heidi Madsen, a local who had been using permacultural practices to create a self-sustaining home for her and her family on the estate, to care for the medicinal herbs and to give classes to local community members about the sustainable practices utilized on the estate. In addition to learning about this sort of small-scale regenerative farming, Jordan also took a course on the design of larger scale farms, and attended a camp-out in the rural Mastodon Valley farm, a 300-acre cattle farm in Viola, Wisconsin that focuses on sustainable large-scale ranching. “They used rotational grazing, which is basically grazing cattle in a way that actually adds to the soil’s carbon content over time, rather than more unsustainable, conventional cattle operations. This works by moving the cows to a new parcel of land before they actually kill the grass as such the grass is allowed to keep growing, synthesizing, and adding carbon content,” Jordan explained in further detail during our interview. 

As a final project for his course, Jordan took upon designing his own hypothetical farm that employed the principles that had been taught by the course, but for Jordan this became much more than just a final project for his class – throughout the summer and the subsequent months he came to actualize little bits of his plan in his own backyard. For example, he planted raised beds, grew berries, and even convinced his dad to stop mowing certain sectors of the backyard which has allowed parts of the property to take a life of their own. “The first thing that happens each spring is that the property gets covered with daisies, butterflies, and bees – it’s beautiful,” Jordan said to me with a smile as he told me all about his home back in Minnesota.

Jordan’s next step after that summer was to shift his energies towards public policy in Minnesota; he wanted to help promote policies that would incentivize the more sustainable type of farming that he’d learned about over the summer. He became a member of the Climate Strike team in Minnesota, participated in the environmental club at his high school, and worked in partnership with the Youth Environmental Activists of Minnesota. Among the events he was able to attend was a teach-in at the Minnesota capital where he, and others, listened to and participated in a talk about the Line Three pipeline and watched presentations from local unions such as a janitor’s union that was promoting the use of green chemicals that were more sustainable and safer for janitors to use. 

Jordan assumed he would continue to pursue his passion for the environment through a major like Environmental Studies while at Yale, but, instead, he’s found himself encaptivated by the Directed Studies program. “Something that I’ve done a lot in my papers is to look at how they view and talk about the environment and what that says about their worldview,” Jordan described when asked how he brought together the two fields. Through his reading of classics, Jordan has gained an admiration for the environmental humanities and ecocriticism in the way that they can influence and inform public thought. He even cited Adam and Eve as an example of a story that highlights connections to nature as it is a story of how humanity’s descent to evil is tied to our separation from nature. 

But that still begs the question: how did Jordan gain the ability to identify vegetation in such an effortless manner? It was something he picked up both during all his time outdoors on the many aforementioned experiences and something he has studied a lot for; he describes this ability to walk outside and be able to identify plants’ names and what they can be used for as something that just feels natural to him. 

As we stood atop East Rock that first time and looked out to the city of New Haven, you could feel Jordan’s love, respect, and great admiration for the plants around him – it was contagious, and influencing. And so, as we walked back down, I thought to ask him what his favorite plant was and he responded, “It’s Yarrow; it’s a plant that’s normally seen as a weed but it’s actually great for soil, has a lot of medicinal value, and blooms beautiful flowers. It’s the underdog equivalent of a plant and that makes it special to me.”