Dateline: April 22nd, 2025 Germantown, MD

from the diary of Our Anonymous Reporter:

I arrived at Will Knowland’s home, a tree-shrouded townhouse in a pleasant but seemingly unexceptional suburban Maryland community less than half an hour’s drive “beyond the Beltway” of Washington, DC, and was welcomed at the door by the casual gentleman himself.

He appeared to be in excellent health, and at least a decade if not two decades younger than the mid-70s I knew him to be. He apologized that his wife and daughter were out shopping this afternoon, as he ushered me through the living room and directly to their deck, with its gorgeous view of most of a small lake.

Amazing to see such natural peace and beauty so near to our Nation’s Capital! It was a perfect day, with the tree-lined shores nearly fully leafed out already, and reflected in the glassy surface of the very calm lake.

A preprint copy of his newest article on global environmental issues and personal health, this one from the prestigious journal Nature, was on the deck table beside his still-open laptop. It was a good entry point for our conversation.

Upon my asking, he explained that his early childhood interest in nature had evolved when his family moved from the Northeast to the west coast of Florida in the early 1960s. During his high school years there he witnessed dramatic changes to the landscape.

Old grapefruit groves and farmlands were crossed by modern highways and became shopping malls and housing estates, and coastal beaches and marshes were overwhelmed with hotels and condos.

Local fishing and bird life seemed wonderful to the continuing flow of new tourists and residents, but were declining drastically. By the time he entered college his interests had become a little more academic, with a strong environmental concern: he planned to study ecology – the science of how living things interact with their environment.

But during his first months in college he happened to meet with student leaders from several schools across the country and a small new organization creating the first Earth Day celebrations.

Will paused to smile and, with a twinkle in his eye, noted that our meeting today was in fact on the 55th anniversary of Earth Day – a timely interview indeed!

He continued on to say that he quickly realized the importance of public policy and economics, and he was drawn to Washington to study international economics. This led to a 40-year career in consulting to businesses, governments, and international agencies on environment and energy issues and programs.

He met his wife in Malaysia, and with their children, they enjoyed more than a decade based in Indonesia and Thailand, while he continued traveling throughout much of Asia. Along the way, he was drawn to Eastern concepts of energy and health, and his wife worked with local entrepreneurs, focusing largely on nutrition and health.

After settling in suburban Maryland in the early 1990s, and while continuing to focus on environment and energy programs in Asia and Africa, Will began to pay greater attention to developments in health science, and the linkages between worsening levels of human illnesses with environmental issues such as air and water pollution, and depletion and contamination of soils.

These emerging interests were accelerated significantly as he and his wife entered their 60’s, a little more than a decade ago. Suddenly both seemed to be suffering from “age-related issues,”his wife some rather severe ones.

Fortunately, they not only continued to learn more about health generally, but in particular about some recent biological science breakthroughs that, together with good health “common sense”, can significantly benefit the health of almost anyone.

They began to work with medical doctors and other health professionals to inform the public of what they had found to be the best of these breakthroughs.

Over the past several years they’ve built a network of friends and business associates that span more than a dozen countries around the world. Together with family and old friends, this keeps them traveling to Asia and beyond almost annually.

Will has continued to bridge his environmental and health backgrounds, and has become known for his groundbreaking writing on the critical linkages between the two. “Science, policy, and practice” are always interlinked, Will says.

When I asked him about the secret to his apparent personal health and vigor, he smiled and replied simply but enigmatically: “It’s just practice. And sure, it is conscious work. You just have to find the right people to learn from, and then look inside yourself.”

Just then, a large bird, a great blue heron, burst up from the shoreline a few feet away and with a loud squawk began flying slowly and deliberately away from us, across the lake.

“Let’s talk further some time,” Will said. “Meanwhile, I’ll send you a link or two you may want to explore…”