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Learning the Landscape
Mia ’26 turns years of backpacking, curiosity, and exploration into a published guide to the Los Padres National Forest
Spring 2026
Mia did not originally plan to write and publish a book for her senior project. In fact, her first two project ideas were vetoed, and for a while she was not entirely sure where to go next. She briefly considered writing a survival guide, but the idea never fully clicked. “The market is kind of saturated with those,” she says, laughing. “And honestly, they’re kind of boring.” Instead, Mia turned toward something she already cared deeply about: the Los Padres National Forest.
What began as a relatively small research project slowly expanded into something much larger. Mia started with the history of the region, then found herself diving into local stories, weather systems, native plants, wildlife, ecology, public lands, and the many layers of human and natural history connected to the landscape.
“I wrote the history section first and realized there was just so much there,” she says. “I kept finding these really interesting stories and connections.”
Eventually, Mia combined all of her separate documents into one file and realized the project had quietly become far bigger than she expected. “I put everything together and suddenly it was like fifty pages before formatting,” she says. “That was the moment where I thought, ‘Oh… this is actually becoming a real book.’”
As the project expanded, Mia also began teaching herself the publishing side of the process. Using Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon’s self-publishing platform, she learned how to format the book, prepare files for print, manage image layouts, and navigate the technical realities of independently publishing a fully illustrated field guide. “At first I thought maybe it would just end up as this giant document I’d print for myself,” she says, laughing. “Then eventually I realized, ‘No… I think I’m actually going to publish this.’”
The finished guide now stretches beyond 160 pages and includes original photography, natural history, trail and ecosystem information, practical outdoor guidance, regional stories, and research connected to the Los Padres landscape. “There’s just so much out there,” Mia says. “I kept going deeper and deeper.”
That curiosity was shaped in large part by her time at Midland. Before coming to school, Mia had already spent plenty of time outdoors growing up near San Luis Obispo, but Midland deepened that relationship in ways she did not entirely expect. “Before Midland, I had only been on one backpacking trip,” she says. “Now I’ve been on seven backpacking trips into the Los Padres.”
She credits classes like Field Ecology, Geology, Outdoor Leadership, and Midland 101, along with countless hours spent outside of class simply exploring, with helping shape both the project and the way she experiences the world around her now. “There’s something different about living somewhere where you can walk outside your cabin and immediately be out in the natural world,” she says.
Mia also believes Midland’s phone-free environment played an important role in the project, though maybe not in the way people expect. “I get bored,” she says with a grin. “So I just go explore. I go over a hill and see what’s out there.”
That openness to wandering, noticing, and paying attention runs throughout the book itself. Some sections focus on ecology and wildlife, while others explore local history, California condor rehabilitation efforts, Chumash history, native plants, weather systems, backpacking routes, and practical outdoor skills.
At one point during the project, Mia even found herself speaking with researchers from University of California, Santa Barbara after being connected through Midland faculty. “I learned so many random things,” she says. “There were all these stories I had no idea about.”
The process of creating the book also pushed her personally. Mia describes working in small bursts, balancing research, writing, editing, photography, formatting, and the realities of ADHD while slowly building the project piece by piece. “I couldn’t just sit down and write the whole thing,” she says. “I had to break everything apart and work through it little by little.”
Still, she kept returning to it. Partly because of the project itself, but mostly because of what the landscape has come to mean to her over time. “The outdoors has taught me a lot,” she says. “About myself, about patience, about the world. I think people gain a lot from just going outside and paying attention.”
Next year, Mia plans to attend Hope College, where she will study nursing while continuing her interests in wilderness medicine and environmental stewardship. This summer, she plans to earn her Wilderness EMT certification and is also considering wildland firefighting training. “I just want to help people,” she says simply.
Even now, Mia still sounds a little surprised that the book is real. “For most of the process, I kept thinking, ‘I’m probably not actually going to publish this,’” she says. “And now if you look up Los Padres books, mine is going to show up.”
What’s especially meaningful is that a Midland student who spent years wandering trails, ridgelines, creeks, and backcountry throughout the Los Padres has now added her own voice to the very landscape that helped shape her.
Written by Jasmine Fullman, Admissions Associate
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