MOTHER's Newsworthies: Anne Labastille, Werner Erhard and Pete Seeger

Image Gallery Anne LaBastille works as an ecological consultant, lecturer, writer, and photographer. She also lives in a log cabin on the shore of an isolated lake in New York's Adirondack Mountains, 10 miles from the nearest town. PHOTO: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF

Brief: Anne Labastille

In 1964, years before the back-to-the-land movement had begun to amount to anything, a young woman named Anne LaBastille moved into a log cabin on the shore of an isolated lake in New York's Adirondack Mountains. The cabin stood a full 10 miles from the nearest settlement, and the young woman had built the edifice herself.

Today, Anne LaBastille still lives in that rugged cabin, beside that remote lake which has no access road. And her wilderness surroundings are perfectly suited to her work as an ecological consultant, lecturer, writer, and photographer.

Anne holds a Ph.D. in wildlife ecology, and has carved out a hard-earned place for herself in that field ... first locally and now internationally. She's made ecological studies in the United States, Central America, and South America. In 1974 she was awarded a World Wildlife Fund Gold Medal for Conservation, and she's now a juror for the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Award. Ms. LaBastille is also an appointed commissioner of the recently established land use program, the Adirondack Park Agency, and her written work has appeared in such magazines as International Wildlife, Backpacker, Reader's Digest, and National Geographic. In addition to that, she's recently published her first book, appropriately titled Woods Woman.

Anne's always prepared to leave home on short notice in order to go out on assignment. Sometimes this calls for quite a struggle with an icy mid-winter environment, when she must pack her gear, close the cabin, and head out on snowshoes for her pickup truck, parked at a landing a mile and a half across the frozen lake.

It might seem strange to some that such a professionally active person should subject herself to so many domestic hardships. But — to Anne — it's very simple. "This is my home," she says, "the place I can always come back to. Here I can be perfectly alone and undisturbed to focus on my thoughts, and here I can be at peace." — Nancy Tucker 

Brief: Werner Erhard

Werner Gerhard has been a controversial figure for nearly six years ... or ever since his nationwide Erhard Seminars Training organization (now officially titled est, an educational corporation) got off the ground in San Francisco.

He's derided by some as a "self-styled Western guru" for his unabashed campaign to raise national — and ultimately world — consciousness through his unorthodox training sessions. But few can find cause to belittle his current pet endeavor: It's called The Hunger Project, it was initiated in the spring of 1977, and it presently has an enrollment of over 70,000 individuals in 29 different countries (est graduates and non-graduates alike).