About Ed

“Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
–Theodore Roosevelt

Conservation, land stewardship, and wild places are cornerstones of my life, but that hasn’t always been the case. 

When I left North Carolina and moved out West, I could’ve been best described as what Wallace Stegner called a “boomer.” I wanted to “pillage and run… to make a killing and end up on Easy Street.” 

My plan was to dominate the real estate business, make my fortune, and live out my days doing whatever the hell it is that rich, washed-up developers do.

But those plans careened off the tracks the moment a doctor discovered an unwelcome tumor hiding in an unfortunate part of my body.

It’s a long and crazy story that you read more about here and here, but that health scare set in motion an unexpected, multi-year journey of ruthless self-examination and reprioritization.

A journey that took me from North Carolina to Alaska to Central America and then back again to the Rockies. One that transformed me from a drifting, relatively undisciplined, wannabe real estate developer into a conservation-minded, sometimes-too-intense devotee of the Strenuous Life.  

Today, I’m still very far from having it all figured out– but thankfully, my trajectory is trending in the right direction.

And I owe much of this personal and professional transformation to the people and landscapes of the American West. Aside from the unwavering positive influence of my wife, family, and closest friends, the West has been my most important teacher.

From the West, I’ve learned the importance of creativity, curiosity, humility, and open-mindedness. Of working hard at purpose-driven work. Of lessons learned through adventure and struggle. Of nuance, endurance, and focused action. Of the power of a good story.

Through my podcast, book recommendations, Good News, events, and adventures, I hope to continue to learn, connect, curate, share, and celebrate this beautifully complex region known as the American West.

Thank you for your interest in my work.

With Gratitude,
Ed Roberson

If credentials are your thing, feel free to check out my official bio:

“A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life.“
-Theodore Roosevelt

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“I believe in happiness, I believe in pleasure, I believe in having just as good a time in life as you can have, and I do not believe you will have any good time at all in life unless the good time comes as an incident of the doing of duty—doing some work worth doing.

“The men I have known whom I respect and admire are, without exception, men who have achieved something worth achieving, by effort, by the acceptance, perhaps, of risk and hardship, by hard work and even by dreary work, who have had their eyes fixed on a goal worth striving for and have striven steadily toward it; and those are the men who have had real happiness in life.

“I know a considerable number of people, men whom I knew in my youth, whom I know slightly now, who have with more or less intelligent industry devoted themselves to having a good time. They strike me as having had an uncommonly poor time; and the very few of them who have enjoyment have it only because gradually their brains have atrophied so as to enable them to take pleasure out of the infinitely vapid.”

-Theodore Roosevelt