Christopher Charles Hoffman – 50th Reunion Essay

Christopher Charles Hoffman

1280 Fairfield Drive

Boulder, CO 80305

ecobard@aol.com

303-513-3621

Spouse(s): Susan Secord

Child(ren): Benjamin Sequoia Secord Hoffman 1991

Education: University of Colorado MBA 1980; Northeastern University M.Ed. Community Mental Health 1974; Yale University BA History 1969; The Acupressure Institute, Berkeley, CA certificate Acupressure Massage 1984

National Service: Conscientious Objector 1969–1971

Career: Independent OD consultant, 5 years (Whole Systems Consulting); Internal OD consultant, 23 years (Xcel Energy); Management Consultant, 4 years (Accenture/Andersen Consulting); Counseling Psychologist, 4 years (state hospital and two agencies)

Avocations: Wilderness, backpacking, river-running. Ecopsychology. Also see website: www.hoopandtree.org

College: Jonathan Edwards

One of my favorite poems of all time is William Stafford’s “The Way It Is,” which begins “There’s a thread you follow” and ends “You don’t ever let go of the thread.”

It took me a while to figure out that my thread somehow involves art, spirituality, nature, relationships, and psychology. And it took a lot of ups and downs to keep hold of the thread.

Some of the big challenges for me were in trying to find “right livelihood” work in the world while balancing that with time for creativity and finding a relationship with a woman and eventually fathering and raising a son.

At this point, looking back, I feel a lot of gratitude—for my life, my parents, my wife and son, my extended family, and the experiences I’ve been able to have. As for Yale, my fondest memories are of my roommates and friends at Jonathan Edwards, a photography seminar with Walker Evans, auditing Vincent Scully’s classes, creative hours in the Yale Banner darkroom, and a not-for-credit poetry seminar for upperclassmen from William Meredith which the powers that be let me talk my way into as a freshman. There is more, of course. The hardest part was Yale not being coed. I had attended an all-boys prep school, so four years of Yale after that left me with a lot of imbalances to recover from.

I read the “objective data” as I typed it in to the Class Book form and thought to myself, “That’s not really me.” The “me” that lies beyond the “objective data” shows up in my books of poetry and in my ecopsychology book The Hoop and the Tree. If you’re interested further, you could check out my website: www.hoopandtree.org. Inshallah, it and I will both still be around when the Class Book is in your hands. (I thank my Yale roommates Dave Meter and George Singer for teaching me Inshallah.)

Now that I’ve retired from my work in organization development (applied group psychology), I devote most of my nonpoetry time to volunteer work and political activism related to keeping a livable climate. I believe that if we don’t get that right, nothing else we do is going to matter. I am grateful for Yale’s Program on Climate Change Communications.

Yale seems long ago and far away. But since there is no control group in this one-subject experiment called life, I have no idea how things would be different had I not gone to Yale. So I’m grateful. May we all keep holding on to our threads.