Christa Sadler

Christa Sadler is a geologist, educator and naturalist with a serious addiction to the outdoors, rivers, deserts, mountains and chocolate. She has pursued research in archaeology, geology and paleontology across much of the globe, including searching for dinosaurs in Montana, fighting off dust storms and overly curious camels in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, and steering clear of annoyed marine iguanas in the Galapagos Islands.

Her split personality life has her teaching geology for the Grand Canyon Field Institute and running the Colorado River in Grand Canyon in the Spring and Fall, and escaping to Alaska to run rivers in the summers. Winters are usually spent recovering and writing, although she did work one winter as a reporter for a newspaper in a small Alaskan town, an experience she may one day repeat, oddly enough.

Christa also runs 'This Earth', a small business that takes geology and fossil programs to children around the country, and designs earth science exercises, programs and field trips for students age K-12 and beyond. You can visit her website at www.this-earth.com.

Her articles and photographs have appeared in Plateau Magazine, Plateau Journal, Sojourns, Sedona Magazine, and Earth Magazine. Her books include There's This River, Grand Canyon Boatman Stories, an anthology of short stories and artwork by guides on the Colorado River (This Earth Press), and Life in Stone: Fossils of the Colorado Plateau, about the fossil history of the region and its public lands (Grand Canyon Association). Currently, she is working on a book for Petrified Forest National Park about life at the beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs. Occasionally she makes it home to Flagstaff to sleep.