About

I’m a poet, editor, naturalist and mountain wanderer (whenever I get a chance). I’ve spent most of my life leading wilderness trips and non-profit organizations.

I live in biologically rich Marin County, just across the Golden Gate from San Francisco, where our towns are confined for the most part to naturally-sculpted enclaves along the eastern skirts of our hills, and where 40% of the land has some sort of conservation status: two national parks (GGNRA and Point Reyes), five state parks, thirty-three Open Space preserves, numerous local parks, and ranchland conservation easements held by the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. Marin is the way human communities should be built, and we’ve created that through several generations of devoted and inspired advocacy.

I also live in the midst of a loving, sprawling extended family, most of whom live close by. Jenny and I will be posting a photographic rogue’s gallery here soon.

My wife Tina is a multilingual PhD world-adventurer and award-winning teacher (I’m leaving out the “Mom” parts just because there’s more to tell than I could possibly fit on this page) . I share her current adventure, a sunny, determined, heroic struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. My partner Desiree is heroic, too, even awe-inspiring: She’s currently in the midst of a very hands-on transformation of the lives of her daughter and three grandchildren, struggling with a workload that would drown most of us, and providing lifesaving professional wisdom to Tina and myself on a regular basis.

We’re blessed by four children. Sarah, oldest and wisest, is now a more-than-superb, much-loved grandmother herself, and a student of food and nutrition. She lives in Berkeley with her teen daughter Maciel. Her grown children, Amaris and Jonathan live in Winters and Berkeley. Martha, our second, is a research librarian in San Francisco and with her partner Lisel has created the profoundest relationship in our whole extravagant clan. Third daughter Jenny (Wren), a photographer, lives in New York after early graduation from NYU, and travels the world producing free, large-scale potluck art shows (anything really nice you see about my blog probably bears her imprint). Brendan, our son and youngest, labors at undergraduate astrophysics under dazzling southern skies at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch New Zealand.

We find it a little bewildering, but the kids have recently mentioned that we’re great-grandparents (that means really old as opposed to necessarily being really good). The hyperenergetic, Star Wars obsessed, sports-fanatic individuals responsible for this generational assault are Amaris and Keith’s kids, Terence, seven, and Kenneth, four.