I was born in 1951 in Vancouver, Washington. Shortly after graduating from high school, I left for Europe, spending four months hitchhiking and taking trains. When I returned to the U.S., I moved to Seattle, where I spent three years learning music. In the spring of 1973 I moved to Berkeley, California and started working as a streetsinger. After my musical aspirations collapsed, I went out on the road, looking for direction. Ultimately I ended up in North Beach in San Francisco, where I spent the next fifteen years on the street studying "Eastern" religions and other subjects that interested me: history, Italian, guitar, and clarinet among them. I worked at odd jobs and watched the world go by, trying to understand what it was all about. In 1988, I took a job as the caretaker of a house on the east side of Telegraph Hill. Two years later I spotted four parrots in the gardens outside my home. Within three years the flock had grown to twenty-six, and I was in love. I spent the next six years making friends with them and learning their ways. In 1996 I began a book, which was published by Harmony Books in January, 2004 as The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. I also worked on a documentary of the same title with filmmaker Judy Irving. Judy and I are now married and living in the gardens of Telegraph Hill. I'm currently working on a book about my years on the street.
The photo above was taken on the island of Hydra in Greece in December, 1969.
From left to right: Dougal, me, Janice, Marilyn, and Nikos.