Were you aware of the Siskiyous at that time?
As part of the RARE I process, as well as the proposals to build the Gasquet-Orleans Road across the Siskiyous. I had explored that area a little bit, especially some of the serpentine areas around Gasquet and the Darlingtonia bogs. For about six months after college I worked at a nursery near Smith River and got a little more acquainted with some of the areas north and east of the redwood belt.
Did your external interests delay graduation?
I’m sure they did! I have two bachelor degrees and spent about eight years in college. I spent the first two years doing business, science, and of courses at Pomona. Then I did four years at Humboldt to get the two bachelor degrees, and then spent two years in southern California for a teaching credential. You really spend about a year just student teaching in the California system. I’m sure that I could have taken heavier course loads, though I probably averaged 15 or 16 units a quarter.
Was a masters degree ever in the cards?
No, not really. I worked after college in a nursery business because I wanted to be in a rural community. My
wife was interested in getting her masters in nursing, so we moved to southern California. I got a teaching credential and she got a masters in nursing. Then in 1976, I applied for a teaching position at South Umpqua High School in Myrtle Creek. I taught there from 1976 to 1981. In 1981 I began volunteering with the Oregon Wilderness Coalition, which later became the Oregon Natural Resources Council. I never really intended that to be a career. At that point my wife started pre-med classes, with the intention of going to medical school but decided changed her mind after a year. Since we were in Eugene, I wanted to catch up on some environmental projects which I had started. I was the conservation chair for the Umpqua Valley Audubon in Roseburg when we lived in Myrtle Creek and I continued that work when we first moved to Eugene. At one point I forgot, after a couple of years, that my teaching credential had expired. That was sort of a career choice, since I decided not to try and renew it. Renewing the credential meant taking a bunch more courses. I didn’t start out to become a “professional” conservationist, it sort of evolved that way. At one point in the early or middle ’80s, I sort of realized that this was what I would probably be doing for the rest of my life.
What were your first impressions of Myrtle Creek and Douglas County?
After being in southern California for a couple of years, we made a trip across the continental United States. Places like Nebraska seemed really dry (laughs), so I remember coming to Myrtle Creek. I said, “Wow, I’m going to live here!” My impression was not of the more conservative politics, but simply the natural environment. I might be one of the few people on my staff now at ONRC who would even consider living in Klamath Falls. My basic feeling is that wherever you live you won’t have 2,000 friends; well, maybe some people do, but you always find some little core group of folks that you’re philosophically in tune with. In that context I’ve been more interested in finding some place where natural areas are close without some big freeway commute first.
