With a week of training under her belt, KCAW’s graduate news intern Rachel Waldholz is air-ready. Waldholz (who, by the way, pronounces her last name with a “t” sound at the end, “Wald-holts”) just completed her first year at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Before J-school, Waldholz worked at the High Country News on the Western Slope of Colorado, and at the Tremont Tribune in the Bronx. She is the daughter of professional journalists. Although she was born in New York City, and raised in New Jersey, Waldholz has a western sensibility cultivated over several seasons working in Big Bend and King’s Canyon national parks. On her very first hike in Sitka — a bushwhack above Beaver Lake — she had a bit of a stare-down with a curious brownie. “It seemed kind of small for a grizzly bear,” she says. Luckily for Waldholz, bears come in several sizes in these parts — maybe she’ll get a bigger one before summer’s over!