About the Author


I grew up 30 miles northwest of Detroit, in a subdivision surrounded by forests, meadows, lakes, and farms.  We kids spent a lot of time outdoors, and felt at home in nature.  There was far more fun to be found in the woods than in sitting indoors with the latest gizmo, television.

In 1974, I earned a degree in history from Western Michigan University.  My vision was to acquire land, live simply, and follow the winds of creativity.  So, I worked and saved.

In 1992, I bought an old farmhouse near Lake Superior, in northern Michigan.  For nine years, I spent far more time with wild animals than with humans.  I lived without a refrigerator, water heater, television, or flush toilet.  I heated with wood, bathed in a sauna, composted my waste, and melted snow every winter, when my pump froze for months.

I feasted on the beauty of the northern lights, intense whiteout blizzards, deer, bears, coyotes, eagles, foxes, and beavers.  I enjoyed an intimate experience with the living world that most mainstream people will never know.

I spent some time with native people.  For them, the land, the life, the spirits, and everything else were sacred.  This felt so much more coherent than the human-centered religious beliefs of the dominant culture.  My years in the forest were a time of intense learning and healing, a great gift.  Today, in consumer society, I feel like an outsider visiting a strange realm.

For more than 20 years, I have devoted much effort to understanding the turbulent saga of humankind.  I’ve read mountains of books.  We’ve created a way of life that is spectacularly unsustainable.  It has no long-term future.

For the last six years, I’ve been studying and writing full time, seven days a week.  Intensive learning invigorates critical thinking, and illuminates dodgy beliefs and myths.  This leads to a state of mind that is strikingly different from the mainstream thinking that is closing the curtains on the future.

My goal is to help those who seek to learn, to help them ask deeper questions, to encourage them to think outside the box.  Once the coming storms have passed, many huge obstacles to sustainable living will be gone.  The path home will be long and challenging.  It’s time to share what I’ve learned.  I hope that some of it may be useful.  Welcome!