This project began thirty years ago as a collection of stories about my childhood summers on a farm in southwest Michigan, how those rural experiences shaped my values, my love of animals and plants, my need for outdoor solitude, and my concern for the environment. As I later composed additional stories of my teen years, the project evolved into full-fledged autobiography. But who am I to write an autobiography? There were no tragedies, no holocausts to survive, no molestations. Instead, what you have is an intimate look at the life of a man of those times, his growing up and coming of age, his intellectual and spiritual development, his evolution from a wannabe farmer to a PhD scientist conducting health research for the National Institutes of Health and the American Red Cross, while writing poetry in his spare time. Part history, part science, part philosophy and travelogue, this is the story of my odyssey through the last half of the 20th century and into the third millennium. It is a privilege to share it with you.