Philosophically, my primary work revolves around telling stories and attempting to connect people with place. Mildly successful but mostly frustrated by the results. Or, they may take longer and are less obvious than my patience allows. Most likely some combination of both.

Practically, most of my work is analyzing and evaluating natural systems, helping people clearly articulate their intentions related to those systems and working to integrate the two for some sort of mutual benefit, ideally the perpetually reinforcing and antifragile type.

My role is multifaceted. Interpreter and conduit to help people look at land and natural systems differently, in more meaningful ways. Nurturer and protector to identify valuable traits, characteristics and processes of land and how to preserve, enhance, work with them to meet peoples wants and needs. Designer exploring creative solutions. Manager and overseer guiding small teams and outside consultants through a process to reach a shared goal.

My work has been at the intersection of landscape architecture, planning, ecological design and agriculture for a long time. At the outset (landscape architecture and planning) the motivation was simply that good design can make a meaningful difference in people's lives, in ways that most do not realize. Public spaces, places of education and learning interested me the most because they offer huge areas of leverage and exposure. Soon after the beginning of my professional practice, that motivation was hardened by the realization and importance of functional and working landscapes (ecological design and agriculture), of the need for people not to just be in a place for it to have an affect on them but the need for people to actively engage and interact with it - nurture, tend, steward, observe, obtain yields - to be producers and not just consumers. Or rather, that responsible consumers are in fact producers and that real, genuine connection to a place, to land, can only come from working with it not just passing through or existing in it. Now, mid-career, it's still that same motivation but it has become so much richer with insight while also becoming so much harder to create the space for those types of meaningful connections and relationships to develop.

Honestly, they are probably the ones that I’m not aware of yet. From where I sit now, some big ones are getting comfortable with and understanding the value of aging; either finding a new place to put down roots or excepting the place I’m at and putting them down here; (related) building more community and (re)learning to be more social in the post-COVID era; balancing my needs and wants with those of my partner and family; distilling what it is I truly want to do with my time.

Along the lines of the answer to question 3. I have been somewhat scattered in my professional work since early on, a clear direction of interest but a lack of clarity in how to turn those interests into meaningful work that resonates more fully with my intentions and motivations. There is so much lateral movement within my areas of expertise that it has been somewhat paralyzing, though very educational. Put simply, I'm looking for a deepening of my work but with some added clarity. There is a feeling of unrealized potential both personally and professionally. I’d like the time to sit with and consider how to move the needle and what sort of changes might help and/or is needed. In that sense, my aim is twofold. First, I’d like to breathe life into and refine an idea or some ideas that I’ve been nurturing for some time that straddles my areas of professional interests in a unique way. Second, I’d like to find the direction needed to bring that idea or set of ideas to fruition, a plan to realize the application once they have been fully baked.

I am a registered Landscape Architect (though I am increasingly at odds with that phrase) which means going through an accredited university program, working under several registered landscape architects, passing multiple professional exams for licensure and maintaining my professional accreditation through education credits, fees, etc. To that professional piece I have added additional experience (mostly through investment of time and energy) in perennial agriculture, recreational therapy, work-based education, non-profit and for profit business development and community organizing. Those additional interests have lead to occasional roles as a teacher or educator and the forming of several business, some with partners. Most of my time is spent trying to balance both "soft" skills (those that are more of an intellectual) with "hard" skills (those that are more physical and hands-on).

Ecological design, perennial agriculture, permaculture, landscape architecture, architecture, civil engineering, market gardening, primitive skills, foraging, graphic design, carpentry, small machines, traditional ecological knowledge, philosophy.

Emerson - Thoreau - Whitman, Bob Dylan, Ghandi, Lao-Tzu, Socrates, Albert Camus, Frederick Law Olmstead, Ian McHarg, Frank Loyd Wright, Capability Brown, Roberto Burle Marx, Laurie Olin, Michael Van Vulkenburg, Piet Oudolf, Christopher Alexander, Bill Mollison, Eliot Coleman, Brad Lancaster, Darren Daugherty, Allan Savory, Masanobu Fukuoka, Wendell Berry, FH King, J Russell Smith, Buckminster Fuller, Joseph Campbell, Martin Prechtel, Jon Young, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Micahel Pollan, Bill McKibben, Eric Toensmeier, Charles Eisenstein

Wow. Ahhhh, no. Well...maybe.

I think I mostly cycle through different phases of existentialism, transcendentalism and buddhism or taoism but that could just be the story that I tell myself. My partner may give you a completely different take on this. And we might both be right, there's definitely some duality at play, an inner struggle or journey. In my day to day I'm very practical and grounded, an experiential learner. That said, I do believe in some sort of life force or binding universal element as a form of spirituality, I like to feel aligned with natural rhythms. I used to be waaay into transcendentalism, shamans and the idea of pi or some sort of universal mathmatical/metaphysical explanation that would unlock a higher level. Then I got older.

I sometimes think of humans as the Doozers from Fraggle Rock (yes I was born in the 80's), self-obsessed, peculiar, industrious but in a curious and maybe completely inefficient way, somewhat unaware of much bigger elements all around them. Unaware not because they don't see them but mostly because they have better things to do...or so they think. My sense is we make more work for ourselves than we need to but that it could be by design - we are change agents, for better or for worse. I find myself constantly fighting the urge to follow contemporary culture and urging my kids to do the same. I often find myself appreciating earlier forms of thought like indigenous traditions and eastern philosophy. I can keep up with and sometimes do enjoy the pace of western culture but I abhor the history of western cultural development and appreciate moving slower, taking time, being more reverent and reciprocal.