Susan McDougall

Growing up in Seattle, my connection to the natural world has been a sustaining interest and source of comfort throughout my life. My academic background encompassed studies in math and science at the University of Washington; in time this led to a career as a software engineer at Boeing. But always a love of the outdoors and the desire to learn about what I encountered remained.

With retirement I could pursue that nascent passion through writing and art. Sometimes the writing has involved travel and photography, and one result was a book -Trees Live Here: the Arboretums of America. Reaching back to earlier times, as the daughter of a fisherman father, I researched and wrote Circled Life: Salmon of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. On a more personal level, reminiscences of a sea captain grandfather who lived and worked in the heyday of the steamboat era and a fisherman father have provided me inspirations of lives well-lived.