Born in San Rafael, California in Marin County across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, then moving up to his mother's old home in Molson, Washington near the Canadian border with a garden and mountains around an old mining town, Rod had a wide view of what was out there from the beginning.

Our lives are what we notice and care about and some of us find a way to put that down and make a record. What we notice and care about could be completely internal, but usually is not. So we go about collecting impressions and somehow writing our book of words or images as we live.