CHILDHOOD INFLUENCES

Wellik credits her love of the outdoors to growing up in the North Country and to the simple, traditional way of life she learned as a child while spending summers on her grandparents' farm in Harperfield with her brother, Jesse.

She remembers being around the animals -- cows, goats, chickens -- and learning how to pick fruits and vegetables from the farm's garden and raspberry patch and sell them at their roadside stand.

"I just loved it," she said.

After attending SUNY Albany for English and journalism and working for newspapers in Massachusetts and Wisconsin, she settled in San Diego in 2000.

An eye-opening experience working with at-risk youths sparked her to start Eco Expressions. Since then, she has received grants to implement her program, including $40,000 to set up an Eco Expressions after-school program in Blaine County School District in Hailey, Idaho.

EVOLVING

Eco Expressions is on a path to becoming a non-profit education organization this year, and Wellik is searching across the United States for educators to make up a board of directors.

She will finish her master's in English through distance learning with Middlebury College this summer, and her husband, Michael, will be finishing his master's in biology at San Diego State University this fall.

She said her dream is to establish a writing retreat center in either Wisconsin or Michael's home state of Minnesota.

Now her back yard is the Pacific Ocean, a big change from the North Country cornfields.

Wellik is doing what she loves for a living. Nature is her office, and she wouldn't have it any other way.

"The closest I've ever worked in a cubicle was for a newspaper.

"I have to spend half of my day working outside, and I'm lucky I get to hike with kids and do things like canoeing.

"Creative writing by canoe -- I mean, my gosh, that's like a perfect day."