Maya Horner

Outreach Instructional Specialist
Maya
mayahorner@arizona.edu

You will find me...

You'll find me helping kids realize their love for desert watersheds at our Water Festivals all across Southern Arizona. When I'm not in the field or in the office, you can find me riding bikes with my cycling team, backpacking, or spending time with my two sisters.!

 

Why Water? 

Dams and reservoirs have enabled unprecedented growth in arid regions, but they also entrenched the idea that water is something to be engineered, transported, and consumed far from its source, allowing communities in Arizona to rely on a river hundreds of miles away without understanding its limits or consequences. These systems represent a profound disconnection between people and the watersheds that sustain them. Everything ultimately goes back to water, and it is precisely this disconnect that motivates my work. I strive to help build a more informed and engaged public in Arizona that understands where our water comes from, what it costs to move it, and why long-term stewardship depends not on control, but instead on education and respect.

 

I close my eyes and listen to the voices of the rain. The reflecting surface of the pool is textured with their signatures, each one different in pace and resonance. Every drip it seems is changed by its relationship with life, whether it encounters moss or maple or fir bark or my hair. And we think of it as simply rain, as if it were one thing, as if we understood it. I think that moss knows rain better than we do, and so do maples. Maybe there is no such thing as rain; there are only raindrops, each with its own story.”– Robin Wall Kimmerer