Who is this guy? Why is he here?

To make sense of what follows, I should probably tell you a little about myself, since a fellow's perceptions are forged by what he has lived.

I first appeared in 1948, in Southern California, in a land that still contained scraps of a former natural and cultural beauty. The fragrance of orange groves still perfumed the countryside between towns, and ancient sycamores and live oaks shaded the arroyos. Spanish names on the land still meant something.

In 1949 I contracted polio, which was a common and terrifying scourge in those days. It left me with one leg paralyzed, and the other partially so. I mention this only because that significant a disability can't help but color one's future.

When I graduated from high school, I left "the city" for good. I attended college on the far northern California coast, near the Oregon border. To live in a small town for the first time, to be surrounded by the coast redwood forests and the sea - these things completely changed my life and my outlook. I spent my summers working as a state park naturalist in the best job I've ever had. During those college years I campaigned for the establishment of Redwood National Park and the protection of the Grand Canyon from two proposed dams, and somehow still managed to graduate on schedule.

In 1971, I joined the Peace Corps and spent three years in my beloved Colombia. A year was spent on the Caribbean Coast working in national park management, and then I spent two years involved in community development deep in the Orinoco/Amazon jungles of central Colombia.

Then came another college degree, with my field work done on a Native reservation in Alaska. The years have flown. I helped manage a conservation-based youth facility; ran the environmental education programs at Redwood National Park; served eleven years as a ranger in Yellowstone National Park; and I now run wilderness management training programs for the federal government.

A love for the land and a love for humanity have been my two guiding lights. I'd like to share with you a bit of what I've seen and learned along the way.

And I want to dedicate this website to someone really special...


para mi amigo Juan