Now I am old. Just yesterday I was 30, but today I am 62 (1995) and now I must think things and say things that the young do not. Sixty-two is not very old, but everything is relative. Forty years ago, the life expectancy in India was only 29. A person 30 or 62 is that society was old and had the same responsibilities that I feel at 62. I have much more life enthusiasm left, but there are sign posts, things with which to relate age. There was the 50th birthday party. Retirement is now possible, strongly suggested at 65. There are 10 years left before I hit white male life expectancy. Now I am old and there are things to be done before I pass. Passing could be any day now, as it has always been, but when you are old you realize it keenly. There is no time to heal, recover, or try again. Nothing can be "put off" safely. There is so much to be done ... before it is too late.

Here at the cabin I plant trees that I realize I shall never see in full bloom. They are watered by my tears for my grandchildren and people who pass by on the road. We have tried to buy some large trees to plant. Largeness is one of the only ways I know how actually to buy time. The older, the bigger, the more expensive. But the older, the prettier. The older, the more likely the tree to bear fruit for our wild animals, blossoms for us in spring, crotches for bird nests, and bird songs - part of the symphony orchestra for the land here. I buy small trees because I cannot afford large ones, but I am foolish because I shall never see them as large. I should have started sooner, but then I had no place to plant. I should buy a few old trees, but that too is unsatisfactory for 20 acres. Planting trees is a way actually and physically to work with time. Planting can make you weep for your past and sing for the future. When you plant a tree, you plan. You have to think ahead for at least 50 years. Today, I planted 4 trees and I am 62, and I planned, but I am old.

Late for many people, at least for me, it comes as a small shock that life is lived based on a set of assumptions. These include not-very-profound things like "most people are honest," "most people keep promises," and "vacations are good for you." One important surprise for me was to realize that writing ideas, recommendations, and discoveries does not produce solutions. My assumption was about the power of the pen and it emerged from slogans like "the pen is mightier than the sword," and from reading accounts of the great journalists, reading about the honor given to great literature, and from hearing successes of people at causing change such as by Rachael Carson's Silent Spring. She too was old.

The surprise at discovering this assumption about writing that has influenced my life was notable. How could I have been so unaware? Sadness followed, for clearly others do not feel the same way. Some cannot write. There are thousands of aspiring writers flooding publishers with manuscripts. I can list 500 books I need to read (not just want to) about forests, wildlife, ecosystems, and their management. I cannot do it, even if I could afford to try. At the rate of mastering a book, every 2 weeks on average, I need to live to be 75 - but then there will be new, important books published in that period faster than one every two weeks. I become older and more out-of-date, faster. The probability that any article, any book, can be very influential any longer in the publication environment of the world is remote. "Remote" means "of exceeding low probability," odds in a game in which a rational person would not play. I still want to play because I cannot get rid of my assumption - even if it is flawed.

I wanted to write as a young man. I adopted the technique. I maintain a large filing system. I collected "words" and built vocabulary. Later in wildlife research work I developed a 4-inch by 6-inch card system for notes, observations, references, etc. In there I have a tab card marked "Ideas for Development." On slips of paper I write ideas - whenever then occur. I date them and file them. Irregularly, I go through the cards and say "awh" over a recent article by someone who "scooped" me on an idea. Then I ponder the sources of money that might allow me and students to develop some idea of particular interest. The slips of paper have proven successful. An idea is hard to get. It is usually fleeting, often irretrievable an hour later. Discipline in taking such notes can be extremely beneficial. Note cards in bedroom, toilet, and reading stand are essential, for these are the places ideas usually abound. The slips of paper have also been successful in physically proving I am old. Time is running out. The card deck grows rather than shrinks. I get ideas at increasing rates, probably because of the number of factors now stored in my mind. I have a notion that there are few really new things, only new combinations of the old. Not combinations, but permutations is the key because permutations include temporal sequences. The permutations of things is N-factorial. Four-factored is the product of 4, 3, 2, and 1 or 24 sequences of ways to put 4 things together. Five-factorial is 120, a pretty impressive jump from 4 to 5 in possibilities! The more things known, the larger N, the more ideas. Screening them and selecting realistic or reasonable ones is the new job and that takes time and I am old. Not tired, I no longer eagerly add to the "Ideas" file because I know I cannot handle what is there. It is too bad, I think, because if others are like me, and many, many times more brilliant and better educated, then the loss rate for ideas increases with age. A society, even a community that respected "Ideas for Development" would probably be a better place to live than now. At least it would be more diverse and more fun. I don't know what would be the stance of the young people in such a community with ideas of their own. I hate to be with those said by credentials to be well-educated who "excitedly re-discover the trite." The world is full of people who have not read the minutes of the last meetings. It is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to be grounded in history and working on the frontier of ideas. When you are old, you can at least see the need for the painful, temporal stretch.

"Time's up," says the game-time keeper. Life-game time is almost up. There are only about 120,000 hours left for me until my life-expectancy, and I'll have to sleep away 40,000 of those! To speak of wasting an hour is meaningless to a young person, but a desecration to an older person. What can be done? What should be done in the remaining time? Worse, how shall I know? Time's up and there is no more space for small projects, trivial committees, long shots for fun. The long shots needed now are for those of deadly seriousness, those, no-matter how low the odds, that have extremely high possible payoffs.

Some days at the cabin I feel very tired. I am not sick (to my knowledge). I am tired. No ideas come, work at anything is so inefficient that it need not be done. These are days when the world will not be saved. Other days I feel sick. The effect is the same. There is entropy; no energy is available to do work, to create, or to have fun. There are similar days when world problems mount each other. There is no apparent hope. The mental noise is deafening. There is great entropy; no energy can be found to be used for solution. The results is about the same - I read a book, take a hike along the loop trail, or build a bird house. All are retreats; all temporary survival ploys in the face of the Great Randomness.

Other days I feel good. "Audacious" has to be the word describing a mere mortal who writes as if it might matter; who spends dwindling hours on outlines for a not-promising future, and how, somehow, believes that some special publisher and special readers will see something in the results that will be worthwhile for them and their children. The hope on these happy days is that action will be taken that results in significant change. Unless there is this twin sequence, i.e., action and significant change, then nothing happened and my time was wasted, an ill-spent coin of life.

I've ill-spent a lot of time, as I assume most of us have. I also assume many know just how ill-spent but are reluctant to face the idea because it requires doing something different, feeling guilty, or begging that it is too late for action or guilt. My criterion for life success is: having made the greatest possible positive, significant change in the human condition, given personal resources (e.g., genetics, family status, intellect, education, inheritance, physical appearance and abilities). When such a criterion is used, selection of a career or a life's work can be viewed as a big mistake. There are some days on which I think wildlife management was a perfect choice for me, but on most days I wonder how I can justify such an existence given the problems of the local people as well as those of the world. Almost any selected occupation could have more potential for influencing more people, significantly, over longer time than trying to work for about 10 percent of the people of the U.S. that hunt. I have tried other strategies, broadening to environmental impact analysis, mined-land reclamation, geographic information systems, and land-use planning systems, but too late and without an adequately supportive community. The effect assuaged my guilt, but allowed the question to linger. What is the best career? Perhaps it can only be known very late in life. Perhaps we are all doomed to learn about our potential only in the light cast by experience. Our potential is determined by pragmatic excursions. Even some of our failures we tally as "it might have worked" and continue to sketch who we are or might have been. The results, I fear, are most often garish, more like paint-by-the-number cards than pleasing pictures.

From today's late perspective, I would attempt to work in the realm of economic development of regions and communities. This meso-scale activity seems to me to be where the fundamental driving forces can be influenced - from population control to health, from soil erosion reduction to stopping poaching. Most people can resolve problems when they get past wants (nice to have) and go to needs (necessary to have), with barter or money. People usually agree with me that paying a game poacher for half of beef would cost much less than the warden's efforts to prevent or apprehend the illegal taking of game by such a person over 6 months. Perhaps direct payments are bad policy. The point remains: if economic conditions were better, many people who take game illegally would have little incentive to continue to do so.

Population regulation in countries is directly related to per capita wealth. The needs are not for lectures about birth control devices, but for programs to pull regions out of their economic depressions - for these are where population growth, with many pressing secondary effects, is so rapid. Within such societies, lectures and other programs make sense. Mathematicians understand the situation as one of conditional probability. Conditional upon a sound regional economy, other population control procedures are effective.

I may not like to work with money - to become an economic wizard - but "liking" is not a major criterion for career selection. "Liking" comes after the first success or genuine praise by a respected person. I have "hated" certain subjects but when pressed or required to study them, I have come to find them fascinating and worthy of continued study and involvement. To require a career to be liked is hedonistic.

After developing computer models, sensitivity analyses are usually done. These analyses allow the user to discover the factors to which the output of the model is most sensitive. There may be 50 variables in the model, but one or two may cause 60 percent of the variations or give some high proportional control. I think a life needs a model and a sensitivity analysis needs to be done. I would expect the rational person (with most of the assumptions hidden herein) to try to select the occupation or career that gives power or control over the world or local system, one to which the final performance measures readily respond.

Perhaps it is too late. I have taught rather than managed an area in order to extent my influence. I have written, but not enough, or well enough, or for the right audiences. I have been too narrowly centered on game, not wildlife; on animals, not all wild life; on U.S. flora and fauna, not world biota. There is not much time left for changes.

The sensitive topics as I see them today are: (1) economic development and (2) energy availability. Obviously, almost the same, energy availability is a life topic ranging from substitutability of forms of energy, alternate sources, access to fossil fuels, and conservation. There will be gasoline shortages as one experienced in the U.S. and as now experienced in other countries. Failure to plan for the fossil energy-short future, at least for natural resources, is inhuman.