Robert Browne is a professor of ecology at Wake Forest University and for many years directed the Wake Forest University Environmental Program. He has conducted research in 26 countries, most in the Mediterranean basin, Ecuador and Peru and teaches an ecology course during the summers in Australia. His first love, and the focus of many research projects, is the Appalachian Mountains. Although not as extensive as the Appalachian Trail, he has completed the Long Trail in Vermont and enjoyed walking the lengths of two of Britain's better known long-distance footpaths, the Cumbrian Way and the Dale's Way. In the summer of 2015, he walked from his home in Winston-Salem, NC to the Appalachian Trail on Mt. Rogers, VA. The author of more than 70 scientific papers, he has also written a work of fiction, Three Steps from Heaven.