As a storyteller, writer and landscape designer, I am currently on an academic and professional adventure rewilding children and the built environment.

My own childhood spent throughout the US was one of building forts, following railroads, poaching ponds, and skinny dipping streams. We explored forests and ravines, ran up mountains, and chased down our dreams. The two constancies in my life were Nature and summering in the Catskills each year.

These feral adventures from sun up to sun down led to an adult life encompassing, at some point or another, backpacking, climbing, big game and upland bird hunting, hosting and guiding fly fishing in Mongolia, and exploring Rocky Mountain ribbons of water through angling, paddling, and rowing. Much of this through the spirit of exploration, curiosity, learning, and adventure - not necessarily "recreation."

The trifecta of my post-graduate research:

~ To apply regenerative management practice to municipal land, parks, and open spaces, to bring the desirable ecological and aesthetic qualities of public lands back into the built environment

~ Develop experiential stewardship curriculum for after-school programming in concert with municipal wildlands

~ Collaborate with regional, state, and national organizations to develop annual stewardship events to spark youths' affinity for Nature and regenerative ecosystems through habitat improvement

Throughout, as a freelance journalist focusing on creative nonfiction, I use writing assignments, my newspaper column, "Branching Out," and original pitches to further ground my community in "meaning" and "connection" through the natural world.

I've managed acreages for many years, discerning the spirit of the land and working with clients to amplify that - harnessing noxious weed invasions, revitalizing or adding windbreaks, enhancing and creating unique spaces for human interaction and gathering, capturing views and qualities of the surrounding landscape and bringing those cues into daily experiences, heightening architecture and built spaces through linkages to the land; instituting regenerative management practices; revitalizing landscapes through flora, fauna and appropriate habitat development.

This is currently where I choose to practice as a designer today. My current project is launching a new product under salt + dirt | outside design called Backcountry Backyards, bringing the qualities we love in the backcountry back home.