Once long ago, I dreamed of a life spent working trying to protect our last wild places. This journey was a long one, over thirty years in a career of joy, despair, frustration, love, and magic. Along the way I met many great people - artists, writers, photographers, poets, dreamers, visionaries, and assholes of every stripe imaginable. I learned to respect others opinions, and I learned how those opinions can be very dangerous in the wrong hands and minds. I also became a writer, a birder, a botanist, and an obsessive over the works of the 18th century naturalist, William Bartram. Most days, I paint, I write, and I work outside in a variety of capacities, mainly through my small business, Alarka Institute and Expeditions, where art and nature intersect in fantastic and creative expression. I dream of being a large bird, or even a small one, where I sleep in the nooks of trees and travel great distances over sea and land. I also dream of being a bryophyte, where I never left, but lived in a sea of green moss and lichens, ancient in my DNA, and forever wed to the spot where my parents sporophyte launched me randomly with the wind.