For us dreams for journeys have begun in many places. We have found them tucked between the pages of good books, lying within the brushstrokes on an artist's canvas, in the stories our parents and grandparents told, or while pondering the origins of spearpoints and ancient pottery shards found on age old campsites. Dreams come to us at night when we are sleeping. But it is the work by day where we begin turning our dreams into reality.

Dreams are also the creation of projects related to the protection, preservation and restoration of wilderness. We are particularly involved in organizations devoted to the Lake Superior watershed: the Lake Superior Conservancy and Watershed Council, the Lake Superior Land Trust Partnership, and The Lake Superior Alliance and Lake Superior Waterkeeper.

Gary and I live with our daughter Sila [pronounced Seela] in the Algoma Highlands near the world's largest expanse of freshwater, Lake Superior. We call this place at the edge of boreal and mixed northern forest, Home. Our favourite places are rock promontory campsites where the swimming is perfect, lakes where loons and eagles nest, cliffs where peregrine falcons soar, forests where we can hear only the sounds of nature. The ebb and flow of seasonal life is marked by celebrations like the late winter flow of maple sap, spring flood, early summer's long sunsets, late summer's blueberry picking, autumn colours along the hiking trails, southbound bird migrations, freezing lakes and early winter snowfalls. It is paddling whitewater rivers, sea kayaking to distant islands, hiking mountainous trails, telemark skiing the backcountry, and snowshoeing forest trails following the trails of moose and wolves.

From our earliest years, Gary and I have spent our lives in the outdoors, the wild outdoors. For both of us, we'll claim the most influential part of our education and upbringing was the contrast provided by a school year city life and a summertime northern life. We each grew up on the outskirts of a city where our wild space was defined by the path of a river cradled in a valley of Carolinian forest and wildflower fields. Fall, winter and spring, this was the place where we searched for secret caves, climbed trees and made forts, and skiied down forest trails. We waded in the creeks upturning stones, had stickboat races, and started bird watching. When summer arrived, our parents took us north to cottages they had built. We swam, fished, canoed, camped, explored and learned the ways of animals. We enjoyed a kind of freedom that, combined with encouragement and courage from our parents, has been our deepest source of motivation to pursue our dreams.