Hal Crimmel teaches at Weber State University, a 26,000-student institution located just north of Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, where the 3000m peaks of the Wasatch Mountains meet the arid spaces of the Great Basin Desert. Hal is Rodney H. Brady Distinguished Professor of English and founding co-chair of WSU’s Environmental Issues Committee. His interests include place-based pedagogy, wilderness, rivers, and applied sustainability, particularly as they relate to water issues and air pollution. At the Rachel Carson Center he will be working on Drink: The Nature of Beverages and Landscape Transformation, an environmental and cultural history of the landscapes used in producing crops for everyday beverages. His most recent book project, Conversations with W. S. Merwin, a collection of interviews with the former US Poet Laureate and environmental conservationist W. S. Merwin, is due out in June 2015.