ABSTRACT
Roderick Nash was one of many young, talented scholars attracted to the university's majestic setting on the Pacific Coast just west of Santa Barbara. As Nash developed courses in American environmental history, fate stepped in when oil from a drilling pipe rupture on an offshore platform bubbled 70,000 barrels of crude into the ocean and onto the beaches of Santa Barbara. Nash's interest in environmental history and intellectual history led to an array of books, articles, and other publications. Presently, Nash spends extensive time cruising his tugboat, Forever Green, in the Gulf of California, the central coast of California, and the inland passages to British Columbia and Alaska, while also skiing one hundred days a year near his winter home in Crested Butte, Colorado. Nash has told the story of attitudes toward wilderness, and has also expanded that concept to capture the dynamics of modern environmentalism.
