My working life is housed within a kind of carnival of scientists. Take, for example, Carie, often seen from a distance walking off into the horizon and wading into Great Salt Lake to visit and check in on specimens. Part rock and part goo, the microbiological colonies she studies reside in miniature castles of their own making, supported by the salty brine of this giant, evaporating puddle. Her bright fuchsia wetsuit is easy to spot alongside an inflatable meant for pool parties but repurposed to carry scientific samples and instruments.

Or Jim, who collects formerly living things slowly baked and stored in drawers within the small confines of a windowless room. These dried plants are carefully mounted and preserved, as if for a library’s backroom or a rare art exhibit. The collection scrolls back through previous centuries, specimens stamped with the identification of the collector as well as where the plant came from. It’s a glimpse into our recent past, and an archive of flora continually adapting to new environments.

Bridget spends the summer trekking into mountain ranges across the West, comparing areas of wildfire damage and recovery in various environs. She probes into the dirt and pulls out long cylindrical samples of earth, revealing the growth of fungal systems that carry the renewal of the forest ecology on their figurative backs. With the help of research students and the blessing of federal permits, the heavy samples are carried over miles of rugged trail and to lab settings.

Kristin pumps all the air out of the shiny cylindrical chamber in her basement lab. A thick portal window is bolted down with armor that contains a soup of single atoms swimming in an electric field. From within, an aura of purple plasma glows through the glass as charged particles assemble into an impossibly thin film that provides the basis of solar panels and microelectronics. There’s a big red button on the top of the apparatus, a clear sign that science happens here.

Katrina has put herself inside a similarly armored chamber, but one that takes her to some of the deepest parts of the ocean to poke and prod at organisms that are subject to extreme dark and crushing pressures. She put a foam coffee cup outside the vessel to see it compress into something that’s closer to a thimble. More important, she’s tied together the processes of deep sea volcanism with the severe chemistry and novel energy sources that could feed the beginnings of life itself.

Carie Frantz, Jim Cohen, Bridget Hilbig, Kristin Rabosky and Katrina Twing are just a small sample of those I work among who you’d want to talk to more. Seek them out and, in the process, you’ll find others with equally interesting work and a propensity for sharing it. Black holes, atmospheric chemistry, fault lines, microscopic worms, mathematical learning — I’m immersed in diverse expertise.

These colleagues exude passion for science, but most especially they’re a source of exuberance for being in the thick of it and sharing with others, especially students and interlopers like me. Katrina passes out samples from the alien world of the deep sea, along with the shrunken foam cup with her artwork upon it. Bridget hosts entire classes in research projects of their own divining and reaches out to students across the state to get them interested in botany.

Kristin gets her students ready to hit the big red button as they count subatomic particles, and immediately after telling me about the vacuum and electric field in that chamber, we’ll talk about our kids. Carie has stories about lake levels and samples, but you should also hear about her snow-loving, adventurous dog companion, Deb. And while Jim was telling me about his plans with students to provide botany materials for teachers, he stopped mid-sentence to ask, genuinely, if I needed a hug. He seemed to sense it had been a rough week.

This is all to say that I don’t just live among scientists, but empathetic, relatable and curious humans. It’s a fun privilege to be among them and so many others. They’re here for the wonder of our world, but even more they’re here relating to humans as humans, just as happy to tell you about charged particles and microorganisms as to ask about kids and dogs, maybe even how magical it is to live on this planet. And sometimes they’ll even offer you a hug.

Adam Johnston is a professor of physics and director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education at Weber State University, where he helps prepare future teachers and supports educators throughout Utah.

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