AO Wants to Know is an ongoing interview series where we ask experts in extraordinary subjects to share their knowledge with us.
“Trees have been my antidepressants,” says María José Aguilar-Carrasco, “after my accident in the mountain[s].”
During a mountaineering expedition in 2013, Aguilar-Carrasco suffered a spinal cord injury that resulted in 10 days in a coma, three months in intensive care, and five operations. Even in the wake of her accident, however, she still managed to complete her bachelor’s degree in environmental science at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Her thesis focused on the protection of significant trees in her parents’ small mountain village in Spain. But as Aguilar-Carrasco adjusted to life as a wheelchair user, how people with mobility and motor disabilities could enjoy these same trees became a key part of her research.
Aguilar-Carrasco then opted to pursue a Ph.D. in the field of infrastructures, transport, and territory, researching how people with mobility or motor disabilities can equitably enjoy natural spaces. Her research led her to Canada, and a present role as a part of the country’s Technical Committee for Accessibility Standards. In 2019, Canada passed the Accessible Canada Act, and is now working to develop accessibility standards and make Canada “barrier-free” by 2040.
“I’m sure that this standard is going to be an international reference, because it’s very participative,” Aguilar-Carrasco says. “It is a very ambitious project. And I think it’s the first time that [people with disabilities] have something along the lines of, ‘Nothing about us without us.’”
This past year has been what Aguilar-Carrasco calls a “headache time.” In October 2024, torrential storms dumped a year’s worth of rain onto eastern Spain. Aguilar-Carrasco spent five days trapped upstairs in her home in Valencia, surveying the mud-strewn streets from her balcony. But she credits her family and neighbors for providing her with all the help she needed; much like how, just a few months later, she dedicated her Ph.D. thesis to not only her parents, but “to all Spanish public health-care workers.”
“We cannot live as individuals,” Aguilar-Carrasco insists. “We need to live as in nature. A symbiosis, a collective. I am, because we are.” Aguilar-Carrasco shared with Atlas Obscura her love of trees, her “second life” as a person with disabilities, and how wilderness is a necessity.
How does your story begin?
I’ve been connected to nature all my life. My childhood was [spent] in the forest with my dad and granddad. All my memories relate to nature. So I decided to study agricultural engineering, and had been working in agriculture all of my life before my accident.
[After my accident], I needed to reinvent my life. Or, more than reinvent: I had to find some reason to wake up every morning.
I was in a bed at the National Hospital of Paraplegics in Toledo. I was there, maybe, eight months? Between my accident, and my new life in the streets as a citizen with disabilities, I spent one year and a half in different hospitals. If you can imagine: I was in bed, the television in front of me, and under the television, the future wheelchair. So I had some conversations with my wheelchair, because I was alone, and because you need to learn how to live with your new physical conditions. It’s quite hard emotionally.
Then, the news caught my attention. A colleague of mine was visiting Toledo to present a project. He didn’t know at that time that I had had an accident. So I texted him: “I am Maria, I’m here in Toledo in the hospital. I have had an accident, I am a paraplegic now, but the good news is that I’m alive, and I would like to join this event with all of you in two weeks.” I talked with the hospital, and they gave me permission to go.
Being there, in that meeting, I had an idea. I thought: “I’m a wheeler, and I need to find a way to go to the forest with my physical condition. How will I be able to wheel through the forest?” And I thought, “naturally.” The translation in English is “naturally wheeling,” or in Spanish, naturalmente rodando. And this is the name of my blog.
It was my first project in my new life: to share with people my experiences in a wheelchair in nature.
Where did you go from there?
I’ve been building my research little by little, stone by stone. And on that journey, I decided to go to Canada. I didn’t know enough English at the time to read papers as fast as needed to do a Ph.D., so I decided, “OK, I need an intensive English course.” Why Canada? I was looking for a friendly country for wheelers, but the main reason to choose Canada was the parks.
I was very, very happy in Vancouver. I spent all my evenings after class just cycling through Stanley Park, enjoying the trees. I had a very great time in solitude in the forest. It is an urban park, but fantastic.
I read a paper from a professor of forestry in British Columbia. So I sent an email to this professor, explaining my research. He told me, “You are welcome to come here to do research.” So I was super happy. I returned to Spain and organized everything to visit Vancouver. In 2019, I spent six months with this professor in the Urban Natures Lab [part of the University of British Columbia].
And I said: “I’m here, so why not compare Spain with Canada in terms of a legal framework of people with disabilities, rights, and national parks conservation?” I also did a survey to understand the needs and the feelings of people with mobility or motor disabilities in Canada and in Spain. And finally, as a user of nature, I need information: What can I do? Where can I sleep? So my final published paper [detailed] the info people with mobility or motor disabilities need to feel welcome in a national park.
With this crazy performance, my dissertation has been built, and I defended it this January.
In the beginning of your thesis, you included a quote from John Muir: “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity.” Why did that quote speak to you?
All people need to be in contact with nature. One of the problems of our society nowadays is that we forgot that we are nature. We are just a small chain. We believe that the planet is working for us, but this is not true. And as much as we are connected within nature, we are much more connected between ourselves.
When you are in a forest, you can see all the connections. You can see the symbiosis. You can see that everything has a place. But in our society, out of nature, living in stone cities, far away from biological movements, all of us are living like individuals.
When you are a person with disabilities, you have two lives. In the first life, I have the right to do everything, because I’m a person in the first world. And then you have this struggle in your life, and you realize that you are a person that needs others. My life is easier, thanks to the community. You realize the fragility of humanity without others.
The Industrial Revolution is just two hundred years old! It’s nothing, in human history. And that’s why I love this quote. Because, when [Muir] wrote this, it was at the beginning of this change of mind where [people] treat nature as a resource instead of as a medicine. Also, when John Muir wrote this quote, the tourism industry had just started. If he would see the situation now….
In your thesis, you also highlighted “invisible institutional barriers.” What are those barriers, how do they happen, and what can we do to overcome them?
When you are a person with disabilities, you have the right to go to the beach. But if government institutions don’t provide the necessary resources, then I have the right to go, but I cannot. I can’t wheel through the sand.
In Canada, for example, the national parks are dedicated to “all Canadians.” But if you don’t regulate specifications about people with disabilities, [like] how public use is going to be developed [and] which kind of infrastructure managers are going to implement, then, in some way, there are invisible barriers. When infrastructures are not thinking about all realities, some people cannot enjoy the same conditions as others.
In Spain, the national parks are dedicated to all [of] society, including people with disabilities. It is stated that, in Spain, some people have a disability. So are we really a more inclusive society, because we are not differentiating? “All the people” is “all the people,” and that’s all? Or do you not say it, because you don’t want to see it?
Now that you’ve completed your Ph.D., where are you heading next?
I’m the kind of person that never has enough knowledge. One important pillar in my research has been critical disability theories; to think in a different way about how we [as a society] can transition from ableism to normalization. I thought I would like to focus my academic life more toward advocacy, but I didn’t feel prepared enough to do that.
Last summer, I received an email from the Spanish National Organization of the Blind (ONCE). They were planning to give a grant to a person with disabilities for an executive master’s in international development at I.E. University [in Spain]. So at the moment, I am managing the master’s, classes in English, and conferences with very great and high-level business people.
I am learning a lot. I don’t know if I will be able to be a good advocate in the future. But I am trying to be a voice for girls with disabilities, like the ones I met in the hospital, [and show] that we can do whatever we want. Of course, it is not easy. We don’t have all the doors open. We need to open the door with our head, if needed.
But when you believe in something greater than yourself—when you do something for the people, in a selfless way—those doors, in some way, are open.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
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