Prisms

I am a conservationist, which means I try to make sense of the world through the prism of our relationship to nature.

While the particular light I study is refracted into narrow beams of interest, including land health, ranching, local food, conservation history, and the nature of work, the overall prismatic pattern reflects my desire to understand one topic: how to improve human well-being.

I’ve had this desire since I was a boy, undoubtedly influenced by my father, who was a doctor. His prism was neurology and he used it not only to heal but to explore his fascination with his fellow human beings. Although he didn’t talk much about his work, his obvious humanism and profound kindness towards others were deeply motivating to me. People fascinated my mother as well, especially the lives and works of writers. However, her view of human nature, likely reinforced by her reading material, was not as sanguine as my father’s. Still, her passion for human creativity made a deep impression on me at tender age.

These were prisms I inherited. Eventually, I discovered some of my own, including archaeology - with which I began to study the relationship between humans and nature. I read voraciously about past civilizations, learning in the process about the possibilities of human accomplishment and well-being. It was fascinating stuff, even if the stories often ended tragically. But it was on an archaeological survey in my late teenage years, hiking across the desert, that I gained a rare opportunity to study the fine line between nature  and  culture  first  hand,  usually  under  a