In Loving Memory
Honoring the Life and Legacy of Our Founder
Peter Kinzie Buckley
September 30, 1947 – April 29, 2026
“There’s too much blank sky where a tree once stood.”
— Jasmyn Ward
Today, we feel the unbearable swath of blue sky where Peter Kinzie Buckley once stood.
Peter was an old-growth tree, not because of how long he had lived on this planet, but because of the immensity of his impact and the power of his presence. He was a noble force. A man who always provided generous shelter beneath outstretched boughs. A man who grew, day after day, toward greater purpose with ever-deepening roots of conviction.
Peter even thought like a tree, in the sense that his vision could span generations. The David Brower Center is proof of that. A decade in the making and built to last far longer, the Center is a gift built not for the moment, but for the long arc of what this community will continue to become. When we imagine the rings of an old-growth tree, we understand how Peter inhabited the world: always working at once for the present day and for the distant future, while holding the proximate and the ultimate with equal reverence. This orientation defined how he approached all his projects.
Comparing his vision of the David Brower Center to that of an artificial reef, Peter would frequently say that an artificial reef is just a mass of concrete and steel, but with proper care, it has the potential to become a living, breathing entity.
He worked tirelessly from inception in 2000, through groundbreaking on June 1st, 2007, to the project's completion in May 2009. In the end, the structure was much more than just a mass of concrete and steel. It pushed all the limits of cutting-edge green design. A building that ran primarily on sunlight and blew past even the highest levels of LEED certification. Not bad for an artificial reef.
From that structure, life began to stir. First, in the form of environmental and social justice organizations working toward the common good under the same solar-powered roof, then through hundreds of gatherings, events, and educational programs a year. And of course, to be a true home for the environmental movement, there would need to be art and food. The Center’s acclaimed art gallery continues to showcase the world's most celebrated environmental artists, while its restaurant, appropriately named Gather, has been dedicated to making a positive impact on community and the planet since its doors opened fifteen years ago.
To this day, the Brower Center has never had a vacancy; it welcomes more than 50,000 people through its doors each year, and it has been nationally recognized as a hub for mission-driven organizations. It’s safe to say the vision has been manifested, and the reef is alive.
This ability to will a dream into existence was something Peter did repeatedly and always with a signature sleight of hand that made the monumental seem modest. From turning around a bankrupt Esprit Europe into a thriving business within a matter of months, to founding a lasting school rooted in Aldo Leopoldian land ethics and hands-on outdoor education, to co-creating the Center for Ecoliteracy and reinventing public school lunch programs across the country, to helping establish the largest national parks in South America, to building a farm designed to test the very limits of biodiversity while remaining financially self-sustaining, Peter moved through the world as though the impossible were simply the next thing on the list.
If you know him, you know he cared deeply about the idea of Beauty. But in reflection, Peter was, in every sense, Beauty itself. Not just a man who loved beauty or sought to protect it, but someone who embodied the very interconnectedness he spent his life trying to foster and reveal.
So what now? What do we do with this immensity of blue sky?
A tree falls. Initially, shocking torrents of direct sunlight threaten to scorch the tender leaves of the forest floor, so accustomed to the protection and shade of a giant. Then each leaf, slowly, metabolizes that unbearable, fiery light into energy, into the ability to grow stronger, not in spite of but because of no more shade.
And so must we, with the power of loving admiration, transmute the pain of grief into Action.
Action that envisions how to honor the beauty of that spectacular tree and everything it stood for in that great blue sky.
As an understory united, may we be inspired by the same words that motivated Peter across so many of his endeavors:
"Whatever you can, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."
— David Brower
We will forever celebrate his bold genius, his power, and the endless magic in him, our beloved Peter Kinzie Buckley.
The Buckley Family
Words by Lake Buckley
