I just returned from a Christmas weekend back in Minnesota - and saw my beloved 93 year old great aunt and 86 year old grandfather. Both now live in the same old persons home.

I left my visits to them saddened and somewhat depressed. These vibrant and influential souls reduced to a small studio apartment to live out their days, wracked with the infirmaties of old age. While old age is still a distant horizon for me, I’m leery of what it means given how I see my relatives living.

Yet, this article - and remembering the intentional lives my aunt and grandfather lived - gave me a new, hopeful perspective.

Life doesn’t have to end when you start collecting your social security check. You may finally have the freedom to realize your purpose on earth.

This is a great story about a great man, but the post title / url slug "The Last Naturalist" really misses the point. Living close to nature is something that we must bring to the fore for those of us who have lost it. We reach universal ecological literacy not by suggesting that it's dead but by teaching it, and living it.