My little brother is preparing to retire from academia. He has, in a sense, withdrawn partially, in that he no longer teaches many classes, preferring instead to devote more of his time to on-site research which has taken him to Labrador repeatedly and to spend time revising, updating his textbooks on environmental biology.

He's in fairly good shape, though for a not-very-tall man he expanded quite generously in the last few decades. He looks a little like a combination of Mark Twain and Groucho Marx; Albert Einstein thrown in for good measure; a genial man given to incessant bouts of rollicking humour. And he's a passionate bird-watcher, an avocation that has taken him on bird-sighting journeys across the world.

As a botanist and a home-owner he has taken pride in growing gardens around his home completely given over to native species of flora, and in that sense one might say he has an environmentally sustainable xerographic garden. One that more or less looks after itself. My brother likes things to be simple, unadorned and maintenance-free.

Competitively, my brother boasts that his garden Jack-in-the-Pulpits are more robust than mine. He's wrong, of course.

I remember his excitement years ago when he carefully unwrapped containers he had specially designed for the purpose and revealed minuscule plant species he had brought back with him from Canada's frozen North, scraped from the barren tundra. Excited too about the Narwhal tusk he had bought from an Inuit woman far from 'civilization'. It adorns a wall in his living room, along with other exotic specimens.

When he called yesterday, he was brimming with enthusiasm over his latest adventures, signing on as resident naturalist for three Alaskan cruises. He enjoys being with people, and is happy to share his experiences and professional knowledge to further their own curiosity and interest about our natural surroundings.

He might consider using a month annually of his retirement years at the very least, to that kind of travel instruction-guidance. He had met, he said, so many interesting people. No doubt those interesting people felt some measure of gratification at having met him through the course of their Alaska adventure.