Following 33 years at The Trustees of Reservations, the last 26 as conservation director, Wes taught for a semester at Brandeis with Frank Lowenstein and did some consulting work independently and with Solid Ground in Portland, Oregon. With time relentlessly nipping at his heels Wes felt it was his last chance to live in the Pacific Northwest, to which he had too briefly escaped as a college kid. The Brandeis experience led to a book idea, nourished by his location near the Willamette River. Title: Nature Pushes Back: Land Conservation in a Changing World. The manuscript is nearly ready for a publisher. “I look forward to hitting that Send key this fall and, soon after, volunteering for the Columbia Land Trust and the Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts, both of which are doing great work in this region of extremes.” His self described ‘checkered’ education spanned Middlebury, Schenectady, Amsterdam and Dannemora, NY, and Barnstable. College included BU and Marlboro College, then a Masters in Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning (UMass, Amherst). He added a Mid Career MPA from Kennedy School, where he met his wife, and was inspired by Prof Zyg Plater, the ‘snail darter guy’.
