Today I released the Environmentalist. Today also happens to be Earth Day. I'd like to say that I'd planned it that way, but it just a happy coincidence. Some people might read the Environmentalist and assume that I'm against the environment or something like that. I'm not. I moved to Washington from California to be out in the peace and quiet of the forest. I grew up out in the country hunting, fishing, and building forts up the trees. I couldn't be happier in a forest, next to a lake, or by a stream. But that doesn't mean that some things out in the country don't scare the crap out of me. This book is a reflection of my fears , my experiences, and what lives in my nightmares. Since moving to my house out in the forests of Washington I've seen owls with seven foot wingspans flying over my head, I've seen and heard coyote's near my house, I've been dive bombed by bats in my back yard, I've had snakes crawl over my feet at the park, and I've seen more rain in the few months I've been here than I did in the last seven years in California. You add to my personal experiences the fact that I read in the local paper about a cougar eating a horse just miles from my house and a man surviving his second bear attack in the Seattle area, and the framework for my story is firmly based in a scary realty.

Now what could throw people off is Cindy Allen, the main character in the story. I like the environment, but I do have a problem with extremists who think the world would be a better place if people weren't in it. Living the great majority of my life in California there was just too much of that. At the center of most of it was the battle over water. California is currently in one of the worst droughts it's ever experienced. The economic devastation of farms not being able to plant crops, hire people, or grow food is going to be catastrophic. But even in this emergency situation they couldn't build a dam for at least another ten years if they wanted to. Why? Because the environmentalists would sue to stop them. Because the environmental impact reports would take years to do. Because the environmental groups would protest. California's Central Valley grows a quarter of the food that feeds the United States, but they've had their water allocations cut to zero. The population in California has grown from three million to nearly forty million in the last fifty years, but they haven't built any new dams to help accommodate all those people in that span of time.

And that's just crazy to me.

I truly believe that the environmental laws that were put into place to stop corporations, factories, farmers, and everyone else from dumping sewage and chemicals into the streams and oceans were completely necessary. I also believe that putting laws into place to protect endangered species from extinction were necessary. But there was a point at which those laws were perverted for political purposes and have led to an environmental extremism that is harmful to the general public. Now before you jump all over me with Salmon runs being blocked by dams have a reverberatory effect on Earths entire ecosphere, I know, I've heard it for years. But I've also heard that hydroelectric energy is the cleanest, most reliable energy we can produce. And I've also heard that people and farms need reliable reservoirs to help them get through drought years. And I've also heard that putting dams in place can create a whole new ecosystem of fish and wildlife.

So somewhere in there is a happy medium where everyone gets along in a reasonable, non-extreme type way.

But until then people like Cindy can actually exist, and until they come face to face with the reality of the world they are trying to create, they are going to continue along what can be an economically devastating pathway .

All good fiction is based somewhere in reality, but in the end it is just that, fiction, and I hope you're able to find a little escape and enjoyment in my story.

Rick