I am a 20 year veteran in the world of public education. Vacation time inspired personal research that resulted in books including Conifer Country, Conifers of the Pacific Slope, Field Guide to Manzanitas, California Desert Plants, and The Klamath Mountains: A Natural History. Those first books secured a MA from Humboldt State University and summer gigs with the Forest Service and the California Native Plant Society mapping rare conifers. I also like to walk long distances and founded the 501c3 Bigfoot Trail Alliance to preserve and protect a 360 mile trek through the Klamath Mountains known, by those who have hiked it, as a "tree scavenger hunt."