Nature on the Edge: Lessons for the Biosphere from the California Coast
Date & Time
Saturday, April 5, 2025
10:30 am - 12:30 pm
Bruce Byers, Sara Tashker, Gifford Hartman, Robin Chandler
~Co-presented with The New School at Commonweal, Point Reyes Books, Point Reyes National Seashore Association, and the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin~
Join us for an exploration of the trials and triumphs in the California Coast biosphere region with ecologist and Mesa Refuge alum Bruce Byers about his new book, Nature on the Edge: Lessons for the Biosphere from the California Coast. For this conversation, Bruce brings three of the people featured in his book—Green Gulch Farm Director Sara Tashker, Mt. Tamalpais “CircumTambulator” Gifford Hartman, and Oakland-based artist Robin Chandler. After the event, bring your own lunch and enjoy free-time on the Commonweal land, which is located on Pt. Reyes National Seashore and part of the network of international biosphere reserves organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organizations (UNESCO). Artwork: Robin Chandler.
Free; $20 donation suggested (no one turned away)
Bruce A. Byers
Bruce is an ecologist, writer, and international environmental consultant with more than 40 years of professional experience in more than 40 countries. His work aims to inform and inspire a more ecologically sustainable, equitable, and resilient relationship between humans and our home planet. Bruce is the author of The View from Cascade Head: Lessons for the Biosphere from the Oregon Coast, published in 2020, and Nature on the Edge: Lessons for the Biosphere from the California Coast, published in 2024. These books of interdisciplinary creative nonfiction essays explore three internationally recognized biosphere reserves on the U.S. Pacific Coast—Golden Gate, Channel Islands, and Cascade Head—from ecological, evolutionary, cultural, political, and philosophical perspectives. Bruce’s blog, Ecologia, with almost 150 entries since 2011, describes his travel, research, consulting, and ecological adventures in the United States and around the world. See more at his website: brucebyersconsulting.com/
Sara Tashker
Sara is a certified organic farmer and Zen Buddhist priest in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. She has lived and practiced at Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center at the foot of Mount Tamalpais since 2002, where she has been a Zen student, farm apprentice, gardener crew member, farm manager and mentor, and director. She has been involved in the creek restoration efforts at Green Gulch for the past 16 years and is currently the Creek Restoration Project Manager and Farm and Land Apprenticeship Coordinator. Sara lived and trained at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, also part of the San Francisco Zen Center, in 2005-2006 and 2011. She manifests her ethical vows by wholeheartedly devoting herself to cultivating dynamic and thriving soils, plants, animals, ecosystems, neighborly relations, and Zen students. You can hear some of her Dharma Talks on the SFZC website.
Gifford Hartman
Gifford is a writer, activist, and educator who focuses on the intersection of labor and ecology. He is a trainer-of-trainers for Global Labour University (GLU), guiding activists from around the world through GLU’s “Just & Green: Labour’s Ecological Question” course, which trains them to help their communities become more ecologically sustainable. Gifford also guides the ritual circumambulation of Mount Tamalpais every solstice and equinox, a tradition begun by poets Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen in 1965. This circular walk up and around Mount Tam draws on an Asian spiritual tradition of experiencing landscapes as sacred, and is based on a fusion of Zen Buddhism and ecological consciousness. Gifford met Bruce Byers during one of these ritual hikes.
Robin L. Chandler
Robin is an artist, archivist, and historian living in Oakland, California. As an artist, Robin asks “What can art possibly do to help save the planet, at a time when humankind’s disregard for nature places our future in jeopardy?” She uses oil paints, watercolors, or pastels on a range of surfaces including canvas, board, and paper. In the language of color, light, hue, shape, and texture, she captures glimpses of the world’s beauty that foster a sense of kinship with the earth, and leads viewers into landscapes of interconnectedness with nature. Robin’s work has been exhibited most recently in Passion for Landscape by the Mono Lake Committee and is featured in her 2024 book, Awakened in the Range of Light: Art, Pilgrimage, and Friendship in the Sierra Nevada. She created the frontispiece illustration for Bruce Byers’s book Nature on the Edge.