Tyler Winchell is a near lifelong resident of Washington State and an avid admirer of its wildlands and seascapes. He enjoys hiking around his “backyard backcountry,” in northwestern Mason County at the edge of the Olympics, including the Mount Skokomish Wilderness and the unprotected Upper-Skokomish River Roadless Area east of Lake Cushman. A recent graduate of The Evergreen State College, he will be returning for work on a master’s degree in the school’s Masters of Environment Studies program and hopes one day to enter law school and later practice environmental law here in the Northwest.