Marty Peale

After returning to the Lower 48 to earn a master's degree in botany/field naturalism, Peale headed back north, where in 1990 she helped establish the Alaska Boreal Forest Council. By the time she relocated to New Mexico, seeking sun in the wintertime, she had a dozen years of environmental activism under her belt, experience in locally-initiated economic development, and a commitment to using environmental advocacy to build communities, not divide them.

In 2003 Peale became Coordinator of the Valles Caldera Coalition (www.vallescalderacoalition.org), based in Santa Fe. The nearby Valles Caldera National Preserve encompasses a collapsed volcanic crater that she calls the "heart and soul" of the Jemez Mountains. "The preserve is an experiment in land management that has the potential to foster collaboration rather than wars of attrition," she says. "We're a watchdog group, but we bend over backwards to listen to what locals want."

A long-distance ocean kayaker, while in Alaska Peale completed an 11-week, 250-mile paddle from Haines to Sitka. These days she rafts the rivers of the Southwest, turning to the Grand Canyon for long spells of sleeping on sand by the sound of water. Weekends have lately found her up to her elbows in mud plaster, putting the finishing touches on a strawbale house she's built in the high desert north of Santa Fe.

Published: January 31, 2007