Get Back To Your Roots

Ynés Mexía had a lonely childhood, spending her early years in Texas with an absent father and a disinterested mother. She was sent off to boarding school after her parents separated, where she filled her quiet solitude with the scratchings of her pen. Writing soothes the ache of loneliness (as long as one can get words onto a page).

Sitting in her bedroom, Ynés wrote about the Canadian landscape and wildlife near her school. She had always loved nature, even when she was a little girl wandering around her family’s garden.

After she finished school, she was summoned by her absent father to help manage his hacienda in Mexico. Ynés had planned to enter the convent—a life of community and quiet industriousness would have suited her disposition. But she was dissuaded from it, fearing her father would deny her an inheritance if she became a nun. When he died, Ynés took over the family ranch. Her newfound financial independence attracted eager suitors. She had never received such attention before in her life; she chose her matches unwisely.

Accustomed to solitude, Ynés struggled to adapt to married life. But when her first husband died, she still chose to marry again. Her second husband caused the financial ruin of her family ranch.

For over a decade, Ynés was lost and unhappy.

After suffering a prolonged period of depression and mental distress, she traveled to San Francisco seeking help. She was 39 years old. She needed a change.

In San Francisco, Ynés met a kind doctor who had the remedy:

Go on walks; take classes in something you enjoy.

His interest in her well-being forced her out of bed. She went outside. She took painting lessons and took up photography. Slowly, Ynés remembered who she had been as a little girl—a girl who wandered about her parents’ garden; a girl who scribbled quietly in her bedroom, writing about the plants and animals outside her window.

San Francisco seemed a metaphor. The city all around her was being rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake. The rubble and ash were turned into something new and stronger.

With her doctor’s encouragement, Ynés joined the Sierra Club, where people shared her love of nature. She hiked up mountains and camped in the California wilderness. And then, when she was 51 years old, she enrolled at UC Berkeley. And suddenly she found her purpose. She would study botany.

For 13 years, she traveled across the Americas. She collected thousands upon thousands of plant specimens. She canoed 3,000 miles up the Amazon River in her 60s. She explored and wrote and was at peace.

“… I have a job, [where] I produce something real and lasting,” she is thought to have said.1

During her career, Ynés Mexía uncovered roughly 500 new plant species. Over 50 species are named after her, in honor of one of history’s most prolific female botanists.

It is really never too late—to find peace in a life that has felt out of sync. At 51, Ynés Mexía returned to the seeds she had planted years ago. She rediscovered the childlike wonder of her early youth.

These late-bloomers (they are often called) prove that anything of worth often has a tangled and knotted journey. For years and years, they quietly toil away (often in secret) until one day they just do it. They chase after that dream they had since childhood that they did not know they could live.

For those of us who need to create but feel lost, this is the advice I see in history:

Remember what delighted you as a child. Reflect on the time when your dreams were just starting to take shape. And ask yourself: what did I love back then?

And get back to those roots.

Durlynn Anema, The Perfect Specimen: The 20th Century Renown Botanist —Ynes Mexia (National Writers Press, 2019)

Claire D’Mura, “145,000 Plants with Adventures Ynes Mexia,” Library of Congress Blogs, October 11, 2024.

Ynés Mexía, “Three Thousand Miles Up the Amazon,” Sierra Club Bulletin 18, no. 1 (1933): 88-96.

Ynés Mexía, “Camping on the Equator,” Sierra Club Bulletin 22, no. 1 (1937): 85-91.