CJ Evans:  

I have been blessed with a wonderful life, travel, career(s), adventures, family, and friends. If you are reading this, you are one of the reasons I am blessed -- blessed to have known you, spent time with you, shared adventures with you, and suffered through classes (and tests!) with you. I see my experiences -- everyone I knew, every place I visited, everything I did wrong, everything I learned -- as threads that have been woven together into a beautiful tapestry. My wife of 42 years, Susan Jean Murphy Evans, who passed away at dawn on Easter Sunday 2021, and our son, Dylan Quincy Evans, who is now starting his own family, are the two greatest joys of my life. As someone recently told me, old age is earned. That’s definitely true. I am fortunate that I have survived my mistakes (and some of those, only barely). So, what have I done since high school? Let's see: -- College (San Jose State University, CA) -- Newspaper reporter (San Jose Mercury-News) -- Vagabond/traveler: 22 countries in Europe -- Brief sojourn living and working in Paris -- 6-month end-to-end trek through the Alps (sponsors: The North Face, Levi-Strauss, Chapstick, Vermont Tubbs snowshoes, Fabiano Boots) -- Mountain tour leader (Chamonix-Zermatt, worst July weather in a century!) -- Editor, Backpacker Magazine (NYC and Bedford Hills, NY) -- Author, seven-book series, “On Foot Through Europe,” William Morrow & Company, NY, NY, working from a base in Wetzikon, Switzerland -- Executive Director, American Hiking Society; Deputy Executive Director, Population-Environment Balance; Executive Director, The WalkWays Center; Senior Advisor, initiator of state farmland protection programs in Florida and Kentucky, American Farmland Trust, Washington, DC -- Founder, Executive Director, Florida Stewardship Foundation and Stewardship America, Boca Raton and Naples, FL -- Author of multiple economic and fiscal impact studies demonstrating the value of renewable energy projects to communities and showing that agriculture, open space, and natural resources more than pay their way and increase property values -- Registered lobbyist 40+ years (one of the good guys, I like to think) -- At the local level: involved in the approval of local policies and bond issues that provide incentives to private landowners to maintain productive farmland and endangered species habitats, along with model programs to develop “created wetlands” for wastewater treatment in lieu of typical wastewater treatment facilities, which have become bird sanctuaries, havens for wildlife, and major tourist attractions for the counties in which they are located -- At the state level: crafted grant programs to attract clean energy projects to states and land u...Expand for more