TreePeople Spotlight: Nathan Bock

Hi Treeps,

It’s Seed Week and we’re excited to dive deep into California’s unique flora and ways to protect it and even learn how to create a perfect habitat for them at home!

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nathan Bock, Park Operations Assistant. While at work, Nathan gets to encounter some amazing and special flowers, plants, and trees at our Coldwater Canyon Park headquarters.

Nathan grew up in Denver with regular access to the outdoors and mountains, where he developed a great love of nature. He studied acting and literature at New York University, returned to Denver where he worked in landscaping and theater projects until 2015 when he moved to Los Angeles.

Nathan joined TreePeople as an Eco-Tour Educator in September 2015, then moved to Park Operations in 2016 at the end of the school year. As a Park Assistant, Nathan works on the grounds of Coldwater Canyon Park daily.

What is your favorite tree? Why?

The tree that gives me the greatest sense of place and peace is the aspen; I grew up in Denver, CO and spent my summers camping and hiking in the Rockies, where aspens grow in huge groves. In summer, their light green leaves shimmer or twinkle in the lightest breezes, and in autumn they burst into color from gold to oranges and reds while in winter they are studies of minimalism with their smooth white bark and black scars and knots. Extraordinarily beautiful.

Where are you from originally? What makes it special?

What ‘you’ are we talking about here? My physical ‘you’ was born in a small Montana town, but the elements that comprise my physical form originated in some long-ago star or cloud of space dust… My conscious ‘you’ was formed as I grew up in Denver, but do any of us really know where our consciousness originated?

What inspired you to join TreePeople?

I joined TreePeople because I was looking for work that was meaningful while I pursue my artistic career as an actor.

What’s your favorite TreePeople memory?

Finding a lizard that had crawled inside my shirt for warmth on a cold morning in the park.

What’s your favorite local outdoor space?

Coldwater Canyon Park, of course.

If you could have dinner with any person (living or dead) who would it be and why?

William Shakespeare, to see what someone who is so insightful into the human spirit and able to capture it so beautifully in poetry is like as a person.

Rumi and/or Hafiz, Persian mystic poets, for the same reason.

What’s your favorite environmental book? Why?

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn; it’s not a science text with lots of facts, rather it engages emotion and myth to connect to the deepest parts of our human psyche, and shows us ourselves from a perspective we don’t often consider, and ends by offering a vision for a future of hope and meaning.

What’s your most-played song?

Current: “July” by Noah Cyrus; Lifetime: probably something from the Weird Al mixtape I played on repeat in middle school, haha!

What’s your favorite home-cooked meal?

Nachos in the oven

What’s a fun fact about yourself?

I was the Ron Burgundy stand-in for ESPN magazine’s cover shoot with Peyton Manning cross-promoting Anchorman 2.

Los Angeles-based TreePeople is the region’s largest environmental movement, whose mission is to inspire, engage and support people to take personal responsibility for the urban environment. Visit us at treepeople.org and learn how you can join our cause.