David Bennett Laing

David Bennett Laing (born 1940 in Hanover, New Hampshire) is a polymath and the only child of the novelists and poets Dilys Bennett Laing and Alexander Laing. A native of Wales, Dilys was a prolific poet who published frequently in the New Yorker and other prominent magazines. She was an early feminist. Alex was mainly a writer of historical fiction and books on sailing ships. He taught English at Dartmouth College. In his youth, David was strongly influenced by his Nature-loving mother and his druidic maternal grandmother. Although seriously interested in biology, he chose instead to major in geology at Dartmouth College because of his unwillingness to dissect animals, but his extensive readings in biology convinced him that Earth itself is, in many respects, a living being, a theme that has recently gained a respectable following in the young, cross-disciplinary fields of biogeology and geobiology.

After obtaining his master's degree from Harvard, David entered a variety of professions, from park ranger naturalist through forest ranger, preparatory school teacher, college professor, consulting geologist, and environmental educator to technical copy editor. In addition to various journal and magazine articles, he has published several books: "Aspen High Country: The Geology" (Thunder River Press, 1980), a college Earth science textbook "The Earth System" (Wm C Brown Publishers 1991), several ebooks, all on Kindle Direct Publishing, and "Bluewater Cruisers," a guide to ocean-capable North American fiberglass sailboats (McGraw-Hill 2016). In 1977, he published Magic Mountain, a record album of original environmental songs (Folkways Records) and in 1980 a second album, Equilibrium, The National Audubon Society's Album of Songs of Nature and Humanity, with his daughter Robin, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie (posthumously), and Tom Wisner (Folkways Records).

David is retired and living an active life with his wife Margaret on the Maine coast, where he indulges in Nature study, sailing, and skiing. A few years ago, David discovered that he has lived his somewhat unorthodox life under the influence of Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism which has no deleterious effects on intelligence or cognition, but that confers on those so blessed a view of the world that is virtually uninfluenced by social conventions and preconceptions. 'Aspies' have very poorly developed social skills, as a result of which they tend to view the world as it really is rather than as the weight of present and past authority decrees it to be. Readers of his works might benefit from understanding this particular foible of the author.