Elena Rios is a descendent of Azteca Chichimeca, Indigenous Chicana, Native American Southwest Pueblo, Central Southern California and Multi-ethnic European ancestors. An Azteca dancer who previously worked on specialized Wildland Fire Interagency Hotshot crews, she currently works for the Chumash Fire Department-Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. She is also a Nature and Forest Therapy guide, certified by the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy.

As wildfires across North America intensify due to climate change, mental and physical burdens on frontline workers like firefighters are increasing. PaRx Director Dr. Melissa Lem sat down with Elena to learn more about her unique life and career path, how connecting with nature has helped her and her colleagues stay healthy amidst worsening fire seasons, and how she brings traditional practices that honour ancestral knowledge into her practice as a Nature & Forest therapy guide.

What a unique career you have—being both a firefighter and a certified nature therapy guide. What led you to pursue both these paths?

When I was growing up I had the great fortune of having parents who let me play in the mud and build a connection to nature. My father’s garden was filled with jalapenos and squash and tomatoes. I also had family that stewarded a ranch in the foothills of Sequoia National Forest, where I first learned about ranch, land, and fire stewardship.

My grandmother was a curandera, a kind of traditional healer, and she was also a huesera, or a bone and joint setter. She lived in the San Fernando Valley and worked out of her house from the 1930s to 1970s, and always used traditional plant medicines in her offerings to the neighbourhood, and in her holistic healing. In that era it was really common for people to go the traditional healer for certain things, not always a formalized doctor or clinic.

And so I spent part of my childhood immersed in nature, and had a lot of headspace where I could dream and imagine and connect with nature, and the more-than-human world.

I first got into wildland firefighting because I loved being in the forest, and I thought it would be a contribution to help manage our natural environment. Indigenous peoples of the west always practised a sort of fire management, because many plants need the heat of fire to thrive, like the California redwood; their seeds require the heat of fire to open. A lot of plants that Indigenous peoples used for basket-weaving are improved by fire going through, and hunting grounds are opened up. There is a cultural component of the necessity of fire in our environment.

In reality fire is a natural part of our ecology, although the fire picture has changed in recent times because of how climate change has introduced drought, and there are now non-native plants, which change fire behaviour in the forest. There’s also an interesting quandary, because humans have started building their homes into hillsides where earlier people wouldn’t have. We really don’t have the luxury of letting a fire burn now in Southern California because we’re trying to manage fires in the urban interface with high liability.

As I became a wildland firefighter I started noticing the importance of connection to seasonal patterns and changes in weather, because the slightest change in weather could affect how we defined our safety zones, and our strategies and tactics. I gained an even more profound relationship with the elements of life: water, earth, fire and air.

At the time I heard about the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT) I was still working in the US Forest Service. I heard about it through Michelle Reugebrink, [a fellow firefighter and ANFT guide] who thought I was the perfect candidate for guide training. When I read about the training I felt like I had already been in practices my whole life that would inform the work I now do as a certified guide.

Amos Clifford, who founded the ANFT, was inspired by the vision quest or vision fast, which is an Indigenous practice of nature connection, a step towards people connecting to their own inner medicine, our own inner voice. It’s kind of an imagination of the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku through more of a Western practice, or lens. While I was in my practicum, I soon realized that these ways, the importance of our relationship to land and place, are really reflected in Ancestral Knowledge all over the world, although they may take shape in a great variety of ways.

How has the practice of nature therapy helped you on the job?

If I were to speak to how can this be helpful to a firefighter, really, it can be helpful to anyone. I now work for the Chumash Fire Department, which is a tribal fire department for California. I’m not in the Forest Service anymore, but I still fight fires. When I was a young firefighter I was on Hot Shot crews, which are highly trained and specialized 18-to-20-person crews for the United States Forest Service in Southern California. I served on Los Padres Hotshot crew and the Horseshoe Meadow Hotshots. These crews are usually at the farthest reaches of the fire. We have specialized training and extreme physical fitness standards, and are able to respond to a fire anywhere in the US within three hours. Some people refer to hotshots as the Marines of the Forest Service.

People expect Hot Shot crews to take a more direct approach to fires and be “spiked out,” which means you’re not coming back to fire camp at the end of your shift; you may be staying out on the fire line for days to weeks. You’re exposed to more extremes of weather and fire conditions with a more tightly knit crew. You travel together from fire to fire, and experience a lot of intense fire behaviour and work conditions.

At first when you go on fires you’re in learning mode about what part you’re going to play—people might be able to relate to this in other professions—about fire behaviour and strategies and tactics. But as time goes on, you almost get used to that rush when you’re going to a fire; that surge of adrenaline and cortisol your body puts out.

When you are in this type of work, and you’re constantly experiencing the biology in your body when it engages the sympathetic nervous system, you might not really be aware of the toll those surges of stress hormones are taking.

It might not seem like it’s stressing your body from one day to the next, but over weeks, months and years, without intentionally taking time away to engage your parasympathetic nervous system so your body can engage its own restorative systems, later on in life it can cause a lot of other health problems related to stress and anxiety.

Sometimes firefighters aren’t aware of the biology behind it, and they’re only thinking, if I just have that six-pack of beer, that helps me relax. Yes, it’s a way of relaxing, but in the long term it’s not conducive to better health. Whether it’s through nature therapy or yoga or surfing—my son is a surfer, and he tells me surfing is his medicine and spirituality—integrative holistic wellness practices are so integral to our health. As we age, especially, we need to keep our cells in balance, along with our mind, body and spirit.

Our oral tradition and ancestral wisdom tells us what is going on in our mind and heart affects our physical body. Whether or not we’re aware of that on a conscious level, or described in medical terms, this is not new knowledge; it’s been around for thousands of years through traditional healing.

A lot of my experiences as an adult in nature have to do with arriving on scene to a fire, grabbing tools, grabbing web gear, getting to the top of a hill, engaging the heel of a fire and starting to cut line—they’re more mission oriented. But in the practice of nature therapy we follow a standard sequence. We do this to help people arrive; it’s more about being here in the present moment than it is about being over there or at the top of the hill.

There is really something different that happens to the body when you arrive to nature without a mission and agenda, with only just being. A guide helps you to slow down and hold a space that you might not otherwise hold. It’s not so much about knowing the names of plants as it is about noticing what your body is calling for, whether it’s calling you to sit down under a tree or a rock or a certain bush.

Especially if you’re used to being in a proactive environment as a firefighter—you’re used to having to be in control, take over and make decisions, tell people what to do and take action—this is all about slowing down.

In a standard sequence, when you allow someone to guide you rather than you having to try to guide yourself, it’s a different state of relaxation. On the walk you’re given instructions, which we refer to as invitations, to help you slow down and relax and find your own way of being in relationship to nature, and the land, and the more-than-human world. By slowing down and observing with all of our senses, and bathing in the sunlight and fresh air and organic compounds from the leaves, plants and trees like phytoncides, it intentionally is a way of allowing our bodies on a deep level to totally relax and benefit, absorbing them through our skin. On the physiological side, it prompts our body to release. There are really unquantifiable benefits from this type of experience in nature.

From the firefighter side of it, I think it could be integrated into a situational awareness exercise. When you slow down and drop in to the level of relaxation a guide helps you achieve through a standard sequence, you notice things in ways you might not ever have noticed them before. We talk about situational awareness a lot because it affects our strategy and tactics and decisions, so I think that by having some kind of wellness practice, whether it’s yoga or nature therapy or surfing, it’s making a choice to integrate those practices into our lives. It also helps us to bring the best versions of ourselves to the team or our families later—which is an integral piece of having a safe day on the job.

What changes have you seen in the types of fires you fight over the past two decades?

I started firefighting in the 1980s, and at the time I was on engine crews, heli-propeller crews and Hot Shot crews. That went through the mid-1990s, and then I had a break in service to take care of my family and infant son. For about the past ten years I’ve been involved in aviation support activities.

We used to have a more clearly defined fire season. We could pretty much count on the rain coming at a certain time of the year, and would know we would have that time to decompress.

Now there is no clearly defined end to fire season in Southern California anymore because of climate change. One fire season flows right into the next.

It was a subtle change that started about 15 to 20 years ago, and then ten years ago it started to become much more obvious.

Tell me more about the burden of mental health issues in firefighters.

The culture of U.S. Forest Service firefighting includes long periods away from home and family. That lack of balance in one’s life can really contribute to a complex array of challenges in your personal life. There are high divorce rates, depression and stress. Sometimes there’s a certain level of self-medicating, expressed through alcoholism or overindulgence in other unhealthy activities outside of work. This is partially because a lot of firefighters are used to helping other people. There’s a culture of not ever admitting you need help or support, and appearing strong all the time, and so it’s a little bit harder for people from this community to not only say they need support, but actually go and get it. It’s a very macho work environment.

I think our conversation is a wonderful opportunity to have this dialogue. If any firefighters are reading and have an interest in exploring nature therapy as a wellness practice, it could be integrated into their lives. These are things we don’t always have an opportunity to talk about too, especially in Southern California, because we’re constantly on. In this age of climate change we’re just always having to focus on work, and not having a chance to fill our own cups back up. I think that nature therapy is a way of taking some time to fill your cup back up a little bit.

I’ve guided firefighters, and I also guide veterans. They’re very special groups that tend to be very private.  But on several occasions they have all commented that it was really helpful for them in terms of feeling more connected, happier and relaxed in their lives. 

There are times during these intentional guided walks when people are invited to share. If it’s a specialized group where they’re all veterans, they might choose to share with each other in a way that they might not if they were in a mixed, general public guided walk. An important piece is bearing witness to others; that’s a beautiful aspect of this practice. It’s not always about people having to put their feelings into words.

It allows for a state for people to express in words, if they choose to, what they are noticing in themselves, in their heart, in nature. But if they don’t choose to, the space is held to honour that as well. Just being in the same space can be healing.

Are there any other practices you use to keep yourself grounded?

I started pursuing another aspect of my informal education, as an Indigenous Azteca dancer, when I was seventeen. Within the Indigenous Azteca dance, which is part of my cultural ancestry, every dance is related to some element of nature, an animal or the changing of the seasons. The beat of the drum connects us to the heartbeat of the Mother Earth, and the copal smoke that we use comes from a pine tree. Dried tree resin is placed on burning embers and turns into smoke; it’s for grounding and purification and mind-body-spirit balancing.

The art and music and dance are all part of our spiritual expression. We use a lot of herbs and flowers in the ceremonies. Just being in community together with all these elements of nature, including fire, and taking a minute to honour the elements of life and the earth in this way, is another component to being in relationship in and balance with our surroundings to each other, and nature, of which we are all a part. I’m also involved in sweat lodge ceremony. I’ve had other firefighters come to them, which helps them stay in balance.

When I had an opportunity to become a certified nature and forest therapy guide, during my training I realized that all of my life experiences, from being a wildland firefighter, to my early nature connection, to my ceremonial experiences through the Azteca teaching, dancing, ceremony and song, all really informed what would later become my style of interpreting, what a nature therapy guide does. I may play certain traditional instruments at times, or I may sing a song in the Nahuatl language. Although it follows the standard sequence that’s taught by ANFT, it’s informed by all of these things that have been part of my life.

In our cultural traditions we have always done a kind of circle sharing like we do in forest therapy. And so I just guide, from my heart, the circle share in a similar way that my Elders passed down to me, and I use language that is understandable and open for people from whatever cultural lens they come from.

Before I became a nature therapy guide I was guided; and what I noticed was that I didn’t even realize how much stress I was actually under, or how much I was constantly on the go until I did allow myself to be guided.

And then it became very clear that I had been on the hamster wheel of work, and I wasn’t allowing my body the time it needed to heal. Sometimes we don’t realize that because we just get so used to going and going and going.

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In addition to being a firefighter and nature therapy guide, you’re also a mother. How have your work and life philosophies influenced your family?

We were very fortunate to live in an area with close access to nature, so my son always grew up with a connection to nature. He’s been a surfer since he was 11 or 12 years old, and started to build a relationship to the ocean and movement of the tides. For a lot of people there’s a spiritual component to surfing, just being out in the water, and the sensation of surfing a wave that’s really like no other. For some people it becomes a spiritual journey; your focus is just on being one with the water.

He studied human ecology at the College of the Atlantic in Maine, and for his senior project he did a study on the long-term effects of fire in the environment in specific areas. And then he decided to be a wildland firefighter like me with the U.S. Forest Service, and was on a variety of different crews. He was a firefighter for about seven years. He worked for the Parks Service as a fire effects monitor, later working on a search and rescue helicopter.

How has the practice of nature therapy helped you in your life?

It’s helped me greatly because it’s reduced my anxiety and stress, and has given me perspective about what is important in my life. There are times I have felt more grateful through this practice, and it’s helped me with my focus and my creativity.

Here’s another really big thing it’s done for me. I’m experiencing a certain level of joint pain, partly from my age and partly from having lived a very physical lifestyle. When I’m on an intentional walk in nature my pain almost seems to go away. I wasn’t specifically thinking it would help me with pain management, but it was something I noticed on the side. I’ll go on intentional walks when I’m having more pain to manage it.

I know that if people just think for a minute, they would realize, when I go camping, backpacking or hunting I feel relaxed, or I notice when I’m in nature I feel this much better. Tagging onto that, distance runners, or trail runners, get a certain level of stress reduction and maybe better sleep, more energy, from doing that.

But when you go on this type of intentional walk and allow yourself to be guided and really slow down, it’s a whole different level of dropping in and immersing yourself in nature, and connecting to your relationship with nature and at many times with yourself.

When you’re on a walk, the walk becomes whatever you make it. No one is compelled to do anything they don’t want to do or say anything they don’t want to say. They just need to show up and be themselves.

Slowing down can be a challenging thing to do in the world of text messages and stimuli of traffic in cities, and news of natural disasters and climate change. On a nature therapy walk you’re invited to turn your phone off and disconnect from tech during that time. It’s just another part of allowing yourself that time to really relax and enjoy the health benefits of all the organic compounds in the soil and the sun and phytoncides. To allow your body time to absorb all that and engage its restorative, healing processes.

The guide is literally guiding; the forest is the therapist, and the guide just opens the doors.

Find out more about Elena’s life and work here.