Nelson & Eli
We met in 2023 thanks to a mutual friend who was surprised that we didn’t already know each other. We connected at Coldfire, a local Eugene brewery, chatting for a few hours about things like riparian ecology, ethics, and how neither of us were looking for a relationship. Despite that whole “not looking for a relationship” thing we were both intensely smitten pretty much immediately and spent just a few weeks of regularly hanging out and recreating together before deciding that we should probably just be dating and eventually should get married.
For those of you who only know one of us, here’re our credentials so you can decide if you approve of our union, although keep that opinion to yourself unless you want to tell us how fabulous we are together.
Nelson is a harmlessly eccentric nerd who grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City. He’s previously been a geneticist, an ASL interpreter, and a field ecologist and nowadays is a computational biologist in the USDA supporting large-scale landscape monitoring across the federal government. He’s lived in 11 states (fieldwork is a nomadic line of work) and although he loves the rainforest, his favorite ecosystems are deserts like those of the Great Basin that don’t care if you live or die. Solid conversation starters: Any of the sciences, epistemology, science fiction, programmatic/procedural art, languages or linguistics, and the kinds of engineering you do in the course of home improvement projects.
Eli is a gregarious mountain goat who grew up in the upper Ohio River watershed in Northwestern Pennsylvania. They’ve been known to cause a scene with their fashion forward approach to life, turning looks on local trails and perched on their colorful raft on many scenic riverways. Eli works for a local Land Trust, and is passionate about geology, rivers and wild spaces. They are an avid adventurer, achieving mediocrity in many outdoor sports, Eli doesn’t shy away from a big adventure. They thrive in the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest but have big feelings and love for all the ecosystems that the western US has to offer including the desert, grasslands and the alpine.
