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T.A. Barron writes books with environmental themes for both children and adults. His works include To Walk in Wilderness, the five-volume saga The Lost Years of Merlin, and a trilogy about a heroic young girl named Kate. Barron also has served on the boards of the Wilderness Society, the Nature Conservancy, the Land and Water Fund of the Rockies and other environmental groups. See T.A. Barron's SHOWCASE for pictures and descriptions of his books. And you can visit his website at www.tabarron.com.

PROFESSION
Wandering bard best describes it: I write novels, nature books, and children's books; do everything I can to help environmental organizations; speak all over the country to teachers and librarians, conservationists, business groups, and schools. Writing is the most arduous, and also the most joyous, labor I know. While I've always written, I have had other careers, including four years exploring public footpaths (and occasionally studying) at Oxford University, and almost a decade in New York as the president of a venture capital firm.

VITAL STATS
I live on farmland near Boulder, Colorado -- which, thanks to conservation easements, won’t ever get subdivided to death. My wife, Currie, our kids, and our dog Sasha are often seen exploring the trails nearby. My childhood was spent in two places: a New England town full of apple orchards, Native American lore, and Shaker craftspeople; and a ranch in Colorado where I learned to yip and yap like a coyote and hoot like a great horned owl. As a youth, education was mostly through exploring the outdoors, and through travels abroad on a Rhodes, though I did very much enjoy my undergrad years at Princeton. At last count, I'm 46 years old.

LAST ENVIRONMENTAL BOOK READ
The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram struck a deep chord in me. The connections between humanity and nature, some severed and some everlasting, are discussed in thoughtful, provocative terms. It's the kind of book that shifts one's worldview permanently.

MOST INFLUENTIAL ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS READ
I still love Henry David Thoreau's essay on "Walking." Add to that anything by Loren Eisley, the journals of John Muir, Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac, the musings of Terry Tempest Williams, Diane Ackerman's writings, John McPhee on whatever subject, Joseph Wood Krutch about desert lands, Henry Beston's Outermost House, Bill Cronon's Changes in the Land, and of course Silent Spring and A Sense of Wonder by Rachel Carson.

FAVORITE NATURE SITE
For me, I think, it was an old ponderosa pine tree that grew beside a steep-walled creek on my parents' ranch in Colorado. Sometimes I would get off the school bus, cut across a pasture, and sit with my back against that tree's trunk, looking up into its twisted branches, wondering whether they had, long before, swayed to the chanting of the Utes. The gnarled roots, undercut by the creek, had already started to pull free of the soil. Yet, as I leaned against that trunk, I felt somehow stronger and larger than before. I felt connected to something I could not understand, although I sensed that it was even more precious than the crystalline air in my lungs.

Sometimes I even dared to wonder what it might be like to actually become a tree -- to shed all my assorted human longings and sink my roots deeply in one place, to stay anchored in the same soil, season after season, year after year. I'm quite sure that, almost thirty years later, the magic of that tree inspired my novel The Ancient One. And I've often wondered what a gash would have been torn in my life if that old ponderosa had been cut down for another telephone pole, or if that land had been paved over for another shopping mall.

ENVIRONMENTAL HEROES
John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson for sure. I would also add Robert Marshall, who crusaded tirelessly for the radical idea of "designated wilderness",; David Brower, Chico Mendes, and the irrepressible Gaylord Nelson. Also the technicians and astronauts at NASA who brought us the first photographs of Earth from space. After that vision of our lovely, lonely planet, everything changed. Those first photos constitute one of the most stunning turning points in the history of the world.

FAVORITE ENVIRONMENTAL QUOTE
It’s tough to choose just one, since I often think about Albert Einstein’s statement about the great mystery of the universe, Rachel Carson’s lovely evocation of sense of wonder, Henry David Thoreau’s musings upon a sunrise, William Wordsworth’s "Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey," and others.

Yet if I were to choose just one, it would be Aldo Leopold’s journal entry about the migrating geese overhead, words that themselves evoke the sound of whooshing wings:

The wind has gone with the geese. And so would I, were I the wind.

MOST WORRISOME ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM
Materialism, pure and simple. How do we control the forces that push us to use and consume? Often, the media fuel this problem by conveying the message that we are what we own, or what we look like -- rather than who we truly are inside of ourselves. Part of the answer, I believe, lies in connecting ourselves anew with nature, especially our wildest places. Whether we visit those sacred lands called wilderness by foot, by video, or by the Internet, we are reawakening our sense of life's enduring patterns and relationships. And, in the process, we are reawakening our souls.

WHAT CAN BE DONE
Start with our children. That's one reason I often speak to schools and regularly feature young heroes in my books. It's sometimes daunting to work with young people, but it's more often inspiring. And they are truly the best hope for our planet.

WHAT TO TEACH OUR CHILDREN
To save our planet, our children must know, right down to the marrow of their bones, two things: wonder and hope. All children begin life with a natural sense of wonder, an open-hearted appreciation of the beauty, sorrow, and surprise in the world around them. The more they are exposed to nature -- the wheeling of stars, the renewal of seasons, the diversity of snowflakes, the humor of an elephant, the glory of a sunrise -- the more alive their sense of wonder. Whether this exposure comes from direct experience, from books, from stories and songs, or from the Web, it all helps. Wonder is the basic foundation of appreciation, which leads directly to caring for the fragile planet we share.

Hope is also essential. Too much of what children see and hear today tells them that they don’t matter, that their actions or thoughts don’t count. They most surely do! Our children need to know their own power in order to retain their hope. For their hope is also ours.

  Published by the Natural Resources Defense Council -- contact us at nrdcinfo@nrdc.org