About me

If there's been a constant theme about my adult life it's that of acting as the translator between worlds. Negotiator, mediator, I gravitate to the space in between, straddling camps, and find myself neither all here nor all there, a tympanic membrane vibrating in response to the tones on either side of me, telling tales in the language of my audience, of worlds that speak their own language.

I was raised in Lower Merion Township, in southeastern Pennsylvania: a suburban Arcadia with easy access to small-scale woodlands. Tramping through the woods, messing about in the streams and "camping" in the underbrush nurtured my love for nature - especially those parts of nature that you could put in your pocket, like rocks and baby toads.

In high school, I was the editor of the literary magazine, an environmental activist (I installed a green shag rug in my bedroom and painted the ceiling yellow: the colors of the Ecology Flag), and a pre-pre-med student, taking Organic Chemistry on Saturdays ("I love the smell of butane in the morning!"). On my college application essay for The University of Chicago I agonized about how to reconcile my interests in science and the humanities. After ricocheting between the poles for a couple of years, I picked one, and there I was: an English major. Of all the varied and wonderful texts I studied, it was Ulysses that opened the door to enlightenment. The idea that one can make a work of art out of an ordinary day - that the quotidian is the stuff of eternity - was an insight that struck me like a pint of Guinness between the eyes, and left a mark the size of a lodestar on my brain. What I lived for during college, though, was my radio show: as a DJ for WHPK-FM I got to discover music, and share it with listeners, creating sets that were themselves works of art.

I attended Columbia Law School, where I was Managing Editor of the Law Review. Practicing commercial law, I negotiated my clients' desires into agreements with their counterparts, then translated the agreements into legalese: magic words that none of them read again. Several sagging bookshelves later, I moved to information services (earning an MLS from Rutgers). Again I found myself on the cusp: translating the needs of my customers into systems that did what they wanted, explaining the new digital world in analog form, and negotiating between the worlds of those who have questions and those who have answers.

But outdoors is where it's at. However you define It.

Having worked in environmental planning at a New Jersey watershed association, I'm now a freelance writer (books, essays, articles, nonprofit and for-profit communications, fiction and poetry); I am on the communications team at D&R Greenway Land Trust in Princeton, NJ and and Executive Director of the Patuxent Tidewater Land Trust (nonprofit land conservation organizations). I lead hikes for the AMC-Delaware Valley Chapter. As a naturalist and environmental advocate I am melding what should never have been put asunder, the study of the physical world and the exaltation of the spirit.

Being engaged in civic life is a conversation between individual and community. For several years I was chair of the Plumstead Township (Bucks County), PA Environmental Advisory Council, a citizens board that advises municipal officials and educates residents about environmental issues. To commemorate my service, an oak tree was planted in Owl's Nest Park; this was a great honor, one normally reserved for memorials. To be able to watch the tree grow and bear fruit within my lifetime is an undreamed-of privilege.

For most of my life, I've been surrounded by the Eastern woodlands that nurtured my childhood love for trees and rocks. Where I now live, in southeastern Pennsylvania, the woodlands interweave suburban and rural landscapes. I'm on the edge, always in transition.