Paul Rakos

Direct connection to the outdoors started very early, at the age of one. My older brothers and sisters found me eating the tiny indigenous periwinkle species living in the river that flowed through our farm, not far from these Olympic foothills seen here. In 1961, before OSHA or Child Protective Services, the doctor smiled and told my parents that I should grow up to be a healthy, well-nutritioned outdoorsman. He may have been clairvoyant.

It might have been the raw protein, or a little river clay and sand that came along with the periwinkles, but I have never stopped loving the outdoors, with particular fondness for the very volcanic soils under our Pacific Northwest feet, and all the life thus nurtured. We are made of this soil. Whether the finest grain of desert sand, or the fullness of the temperate rainforests, these are our mother. This cord is never really cut.

These days, about the only soil ingestion I get comes from the occasional faceplant when I perform an endo over my mountain bike handlebars--I found a really great hidden chanterelle patch that way once. Hiking every chance I get affords me the ability to study plant morphology and habitat, and consider the supporting roles they perform for us, whether we do or don't take notice. As a residential garden designer, these things let me apply the principles nature has perfected and plan more sustainable, more suitable gardens, less subject to practical errors of gardeners--yes, I can kill a bush with the best of them.

From the White Mountains of Inyo National Forest to the River of No Return; from Maze District of Canyonlands National Park to the Elwah River Valley and everywhere in between, these are my destinations, from whence health and freedom are drawn and where care never follows.