About

“Living on Unstable Ground” provides a forum for sharing reflections and speaking informally on my current work. I’d welcome your comments and will appreciate whatever discussion may ensue. I am in the midst of two projects, writing a natural history of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve in Alaska and developing college curriculum in effective public leadership. Both of these projects are being developed with benefit of colleagues and good friends, though opinions expressed here are my own.

A bit about myself: I co-direct the Wildlands Studies undergraduate field program in the Wrangell Mountains, housed at The Wrangell Mountains Center in McCarthy, Alaska. I also look forward to co-teaching a year-long, full-time academic program on the topic of “effective action” for students at The Evergreen State College in 2010-11. In a previous Evergreen program I co-taught with Ted Whitesell and Oscar Soule, students wrote the book Defending Wild Washington, edited by Ted and published by Mountaineers Press. My novel Alaska Dragon, published by Fireweed Press in 1991, explores themes of contemplation and action in the setting of the Wrangell Mountains. Community and Copper in a Wild Land,  co-authored with Shawn Olson, is our brief introduction to the natural and cultural history of the Wrangells. I’ve lived with my family, sometimes seasonally, sometimes year-round, near McCarthy in the Wrangell Mountains since the 1970′s, presently there during the summers and in Port Townsend, Washington, during the winter. During congressional deliberations on the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which designated the national parklands in the Wrangells, I commuted between Alaska and Washington, D.C., handling Wrangells and mining issues for the coalition of advocacy groups supporting that legislation. Prior to that, I helped start the environmental studies program at UC-Santa Cruz as a member of the original staff in 1970-75.