Robert F. Doren is a wetland ecologist whose forty-year career focused on the ecology and restoration of the Florida Everglades and its coastal ecosystems. He served as Assistant Director of the South Florida Research Center at Everglades National Park, then as lead scientist for the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, the largest ecosystem restoration on earth, and was faculty at Florida International University, Southeast Environmental Research Center. His research spanned hydrology, ecological disturbance and recovery, invasive species management, and long-term ecological monitoring.A meditator for more than fifty years, he practiced Transcendental Meditation for much of his life before studying Thai meditative practices with a Buddhist Dharma Master, and most recently Zen practice with a teacher in the American Southwest, where he now lives. His work lives at the intersection of ecology and contemplative life - the two landscapes he has spent his years learning to read.He writes literary fables and ecological myths - stories shaped by a career of close attention to the living world, and to what it costs to lose it.The Ecology of Awareness (Quiet Fire Press, 2026) is his first non-academic book.