Dale Will figured out early in his career that his temperament was better suited to negotiating than litigating. People who love the wide open spaces in the Roaring Fork Valley have reaped the benefits of that discovery.

Will will celebrate his 25th anniversary with the Pitkin County Open Space and Trails program on May 1. He initially worked as the executive director and for the last eight years as acquisition and projects director. By any title, Will’s role has been getting some of the most iconic private lands in the upper valley into public hands.

“I couldn’t be happier that I can’t go anywhere in this valley without seeing a landscape that I know is legally protected,” Will said. “It’s been a dream job. I couldn’t have invented a position for myself that’s any better than this one.”

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night and spring after the winter.

Rachel Carson