The land claimed him.
Kelton grew up in a little cabin wrapped in ferns and redwoods in Northern California. He ran to the woods before he ran home; he grew up hiking to the rugged beaches of Marin County — the same coastline his work now fights to restore.
"Intoxicated with the air and the green, I ran not to our little cabin but to the woods… it was the land that had claimed me." Kelton's journals — The Bittman Project
Kelton, ~4 — "in a different tree."
~10, mid-flight.Walls changed his address.
Not his responsibility.
He was a kid with learning disabilities who rode the short bus, failed every grade, and dropped out of high school barefoot and high, then spent ten years in and out of jails around the country. He came to prison in 2009 and spent his first five years in a high-security prison psych ward; in 2015 he arrived at San Quentin and started to rebuild his life.
He rebuilt himself the slow way: education through Mount Tamalpais College, Wednesday nights in a creative writing workshop, self-study in medical literature and policy. Then one afternoon his cell radio reported that warming water and urchins had erased 95 percent of Northern California's kelp forests in about eight years — an hour from where he grew up. He decided distance and walls were details.
"Environmental crises don't impact us less in here just because there's walls around us." Kelton O'Connor — KALW / Uncuffed
