The more experience a person has, the more simplicity is profound.
- Keith Jarrett, pianist

I come to this work from a varied background — forest fire fighter in Canada’s subarctic, living in the bush with Dene and Cree, long wilderness canoe trips. I’ve been a commercial real estate salesman, stock broker, renovator of old houses, investigative research analysts for corporate acquirers on Wall Street, and now, for thirty years, a book author and artist.

Living in a cabin back in the woods, and on long wilderness trips, I’ve found a deep peace and harmony. It is difficult to describe in words other than the past doesn’t mean much, and the future less — you submerge into the present and the sense of being at one with the natural world. Those experiences have led me to study these ancient Taoist poems and their authors — the Taoist hermits of the mountains of China and the Zen monks of Japan.