I was born in 1941 in Western Pennsylvania, but was conceived in Colorado, by Colorado natives, and so consider myself to be a Coloradan, more or less.
I returned to Colorado after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh in 1964, and have lived there ever since, mostly in the mountains. Most of that time has been spent in the Upper Gunnison River valley, west of the Continental Divide – beginning in Crested Butte, Colorado, where I advanced, more or less overnight, from ski bum to editor of the town newspaper. You could do that, there, then. 

I left the Crested Butte newspaper in 1971, deciding I wanted to write but knowing I would never be a businessman. My envisioned career as a freelance writer quickly morphed into a career as ‘freelance and oddjobber,’ since I wanted to continue to eat and sleep dry. For a couple decades, I wrote for various publications ranging from the local newspapers to Harper’s Magazine, with one book from that period, Part of a Winter (Crown, 1977). For the rest of a living and life, I worked as a ski patrolman, bartender, construction worker, occasional contractor, wildfire fighter, librarian, sawmill operator, winter caretaker for a remote biological field station, and other seasonal and part-time occupations. 

In 1988, at age 47, I lucked into my first fulltime year-round job  at Western State College in Gunnison, teaching halftime and developing a series of regional conferences at the college the rest of the time – exploring issues of community, sustainability, and ‘intelligent life on earth’ that also infuse my writing. In 2007, I retired from the college to do more writing, and that’s what I’m doing now, in the spirit of Bob Dylan: ‘I need a dumptruck, baby, just to unload my head.’.