In late June of 2000, I was in a plane flying west across the Canadian Rockies.  The plane ticket was a gift from my parents to go and visit my then girlfriend after we had graduated college.  I was from New York, and we had met during our time at Fairfield University in Connecticut.  I had traveled a fair bit with my family and the Boy Scouts, but I had always done so with the attitude that New York was the center of the civilized world – everything else had to be one or several steps below that.  As we neared our destination, I began practicing my polite answers for when I met her family and friends.  At over three thousand miles away from the center of the known universe I imagined her hometown to be a small village struggling to exist on a river somewhere to the west.  The pilot announced that we were making our initial descent and banked the plane to the north.  As we descended and made our run into the airport the coastal mountains were to the plane’s right and the Pacific Ocean was to the left.  The flight was landing just prior to sunset and as I looked out my window, I saw the city of Vancouver come into view.  The setting sun gleamed across the water and reflected off the snow-capped Coastal Mountains.  In the middle of it all was the sleek, modern, steel and glass metropolis that is Vancouver.  That view, that moment, humbled me.  It opened my eyes to a much larger world, one in which so much of the land was cherished by those currently living on it.

       In the years since, I have graduated law school and built a career helping clients acquire tracts of land throughout the country.  During this process I have never lost sight of that lesson learned those many years ago while descending into Vancouver – that each tract of land holds value and that this value can be defined in many different ways.  Beyond the simple market value applied to a tract of land there is also the value it holds to past generations and to future ones as well. The value it adds to the community it sits in and also to the natural world and larger ecosystem it is a part of.  I recognize the self-worth and pride that it can instill in those who work it and I witness the struggle to keep it as the generations pass.

       Our relationship with the land is constantly evolving.  As new technologies and new ideas come into place how we view the value and the worth of the land changes as well.  As much as these advances intrigue and excite me, I also respect and cherish the traditional views and those who hold them.  The interplay between these forces and the many points of view attached to them motivate me to continue my journey to better understand land, the people who live on it, and the rest of us who rely on it.  I hope you will join me as we explore these issues together.