The first set of questions has to do with your life before working with the Oregon Natural Resources Council.
You mean elaborate? I try to describe myself as an expatriated Californian. I grew up in the greater Los Angeles area. Never in the city, but within a stone’s throw. In answering your question concerning the spark which got me interested in nature, I’ve pondered that many time but don’t really have an answer. You know, I taught high school biology from 1976 to 1981. I often looked at students and wondered what makes people what they are and how do you reach them. How do you make a difference? I just don’t know.
No single flash of inspiration, then?
Some people just seem to have an interest. From an early age my parents took my sister and I to the Sierra Nevada in California. We did that pretty regularly as family trips, and then my father and I as fishing trips. No one in my family, however, had my broader interests in nature. That was sort of a gradual exposure and no one single event comes to mind. I made the remark in the preface of the Walking
Guide that in my early teens I realized that there were all these little lakes scattered up in the mountains. Hiking into those was much more exciting than sitting in a boat catching fish down below, even though I caught bigger fish in the boat. Fishing became sort of an excuse to be in the mountains. I can be as excited today about going to see wildflowers along a stream or some big trees as I once was about the prospect of catching my limit of trout.
From seventh grade until almost all the way through high school we lived in Ventura County near Thousand Oaks, California. It isn’t any wilderness but there was a little arroyo where I played as a kid, set traps, and caught crayfish and turtles in the creek and that sort of thing. That was the sort of exposure that led to my later focus, but again, I think of it as a sort of innate interest. My educational experience definitely broadened it. I majored in biology and wildlife management and ended up at Humboldt State University. I’m sure my formal education made me more aware of things and heightened any inclination I had to enjoy the outdoors and nature.
Did you get a lot out of secondary school, in terms of science and nature study?
Not a lot. I remember when I took biology in high school and that I did the same sort of things when I taught biology. I often jokingly say that if the amphibians took over the world, I’d be put on trial for war crimes. I remember dissecting a frog in the tenth grade and going “wow!” Just seeing that little machine with everything working was amazing. Despite all the discussion over whether to use diagrams or pickled frogs that you could use over again, I always used live frogs because I remembered my own experience.
