A Brief History of Kyle Keller

August 2002: Born in obscurity in Laguna Niguel, CA.

July 2005: Family camping trip #1 to Tuolumne Meadows. The first of many summer camping trips to Yosemite and the beginning of a lifelong relationship with the Sierras.

September 2007: Showed up for my first day of Kindergarten at San Juan Elementary School. “Wait a sec, why is everyone here speaking Spanish?” Because my parents enrolled me in a dual immersion Spanish-English program, that’s why. I wore Target polo shirts and navy blue shorts for the next six years and became part of the elementary school melting pot, it all seemed normal to me.

June 2011: Won the AA Little League championship game with the Cardinals. We beat the Giants 16-11 and many chocolate cupcakes and juice boxes were consumed after the game. The greatest sports day of my life.

September 2013: Left all my San Juan Elementary amigos and moved to Niguel Hills Middle School (a normal English-speaking school) for 6th-8th grade. One of the hardest years of my life. Basically, I survived by finding my best friend from preschool and joining the demanding NHMS Orchestra program. Those are the three things that saved me in middle school: Chris Hamilton, the magnificent Miss Choi, and eating lunch with all the other orchestra nerds in Miss Choi’s classroom every day.

August 2015: My first real backpacking trip (to Cottonwood Lakes outside of Lone Pine). With Chris, of course.

May 2016: I guess all those lunchtime practice sessions paid off. I was chosen for the SCSBOA Honors Orchestra two years in a row and got to perform at the snazzy Kennedy Performing Arts Center in La Palma, CA. My instrument was the standup bass and I played it with swagger.

September 2016: What the heck, why not change schools again? After hearing about Orange County School of the Arts (OCSA) from my dad, I decided to submit a last-minute application with a few writing samples. To my surprise, I was accepted to the Creative Writing Conservatory in the fall.

I spent the next four years waking up at 5:55 a.m. every morning, driving to the Laguna Hills transportation center with my mom (on her way to work), riding the Route 83 bus to downtown Santa Ana at 7:12, attending OCSA classes from 8:30-4:45, running back to the bus stop to catch the 5:04 bus back to Laguna Hills, finally arriving home around 6:15 p.m. every night. It was an exhausting four years but I’m glad I did it.

Summer 2018: Started my first job as a Ticket Seller and Info Booth Guy at the renowned and funky Sawdust Art Festival in Laguna Beach, CA. One of the reasons I got hired is because of a doodle I drew at the top of my job application. I spent the next three summers riding my scooter through downtown Laguna to and from the Sawdust grounds (which are in fact covered with truckloads of sawdust each year) where I sold tickets, answered customer questions, and drew giant doodles on the Sawdust Daily Whiteboard. Man, everyone should have a first job like that.

May 2020: After visiting multiple campuses with my dad and taking an eye-opening trip to Missoula, I was 90% sure I was headed to the University of Montana. But when I drove up the hill to UC Santa Cruz and saw the wide open spaces and redwood trees and gaggles of wild turkeys wandering around campus, I knew that’s where I belonged.

April 2022: While taking “Intro to Radio” and “Radio Production” during spring quarter, I started interning at KZSC 88.1 FM. I was assigned to the long-running “Bushwhacker’s Breakfast Club” show and on my very first day, legendary host Dangerous Dan asked me to come up with a nickname. Right there, live, on the air. “Kalamity Kyle,” I ad-libbed.

Dan and I became fast friends and I spent the next two years co-hosting the show every Friday morning from 6:00-9:00 a.m. In addition to taking listener requests and playing an eclectic mix of indie music (country, rock, bluegrass, folk), Dan and I interviewed politicians and musicians and civic leaders from Santa Cruz and beyond. When Dan was away, I took primary responsibility for Bushwhackers and co-hosted the show with my friend and fellow intern, Kaos.

August 2022: Mid-way through my sophomore year, I submitted a long shot application to become a Resident Assistant (RA) the following year. I was chosen to join the RA team in the fall so in addition to being a full-time student, I served as an all-purpose advisor, counselor, and problem-solver for 28-32 undergraduate students during my junior and senior years at UCSC.

Summer 2022 and 2023: Realizing that a Literature major might not lead to many job offers, I decided to move to Berkeley for two consecutive summers to complete a Minor in Journalism. The first summer (2022) was brutal: three semester-length classes crammed into six weeks, a last-minute sublet in a dilapidated UC Berkeley student house, living in a new place where I didn’t know anybody or anything. “What on earth am I doing here?” I asked myself several times a day.

The second summer (2023) was a lot better: only two classes, a handful of good friends, and a very cool sublet apartment on a tree-lined street in North Berkeley. This time around, I had a better feel for the summer school routine and the assorted nooks and crannies of Berkeley. I also made it over to SFO and Marin several times and started to get a handle on some of the Bay Area’s music venues and hidden wilderness spots.

September 2023: After taking “Press Production” and working as a staff writer at City on a Hill Press (CHP) the prior quarter, I was invited to serve as a News Editor. I was always confident in my writing skills but working at CHP taught me things I didn’t know – like how to be part of a team, how to edit other people’s work (and let them edit yours), and how to rewrite a story five different times in order to get it to press on time.

June-December 2024: The day after I graduated from UCSC, I loaded all my possessions into my 2014 Prius V and drove to Bishop, CA to start working as a research assistant on a Stanford University project studying land stewardship and the impacts of environmental change on communities in the Eastern Sierras. (I had applied for the position several months earlier, it was a very competitive process.) I lived with the team in group housing in Bishop and Mammoth, drove hundreds of miles around Mono and Inyo and Alpine counties conducting interviews and focus groups, and spent countless hours at my computer organizing and rewriting the narrative data we gathered into the proper format. I also squeezed in many hikes and a five-day backpacking trip down the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne.

January 2025-present: In January I bought a one-way ticket to Lima with Chris (who else?) and spent the next three months backpacking and hitchhiking in Peru, Chile, and Argentina. Many adventures were had. In July I signed a lease on a quirky but affordable apartment off Telegraph Ave in Berkeley and moved back to the Bay Area, ready for whatever comes next.