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Thomas A. Barron

Colorado & Balliol 1974

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Hiking in Colorado during senior year at Princeton (1974).

A thoughtful moment on a walk in the Oxford countryside (1975).

Nordic skiing in Colorado’s Maroon Bells Wilderness (1984).

T. A. with his growing family of “book children” – which, he readily points out, aren’t nearly as wonderful as his real children (2010).

Receiving the de Grummond Medallion for lifetime contribution to literature for children and young adults (2011).

Hiking among great redwood trees that have inspired his conservation work as well as the book The Ancient One (2015).

Blessed by the friendship of a puppy (2022).

A large group huddled together on a green lawn, with a tree filled wth pink flowers behind them. Tom Barron is in the centre in a blue blazer.

Patagonia Wilderness trip.

At the mountain cabin, high on a wildflower meadow in Colorado, where many T. A. Barron books have been written (2024).

Tom and Lauren Spohn (Texas & Wadham 2020) who joined a Patagonia Rhodes trip and also led the Rhodes interview (2024).

Always seeking magical trees, T. A. stands beneath a California ficus tree with Michael Matthews, director of the Merlin movie project (2024).

Born in 1952, Tom Barron spent his youth in New England and Colorado, then studied at Princeton before going to Oxford to study Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He travelled extensively, went to Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, and then joined a private equity firm in New York City, ultimately serving as president of the firm. Having long dreamed of being a writer, he changed careers to become a full time author and environmental leader. As T.A. Barron, he is now the author of 32 highly acclaimed books published in many languages, including The Merlin Saga, The Ancient One, Atlantis Rising, and The Hero’s Trail.

Barron is the founder of the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes (named after his mother) and is also a generous supporter of the Rhodes Scholarship. He has served on numerous selection committees; established the Fund for Character, Service, and Leadership; and also created the Rhodes Patagonia programme, which provides life-changing experiences for Scholars in Patagonia wilderness. This narrative is excerpted and edited from a longer interview with the Rhodes Trust on 4 September 2024.

‘Write a truly meaningful story with your life’

What’s my greatest fear for young people? Despair. And the powerlessness that despair breeds. What’s my greatest hope for them? That they’ll discover their own personal power to make a difference. To know that their life truly matters.

So I often give young people this metaphor:

See your life as a story, a story of which YOU are the author. Nobody else is going to write that story, so it’s up to you to make it the very best story you can. Fill it with your own passions, values, ideals, energies, hopes, and dreams.

What does that actually mean in real life? The first thing is, go inside before you go outside. Ask yourself, ‘What do I really, truly love? What values do I deeply cherish?’ Also ask yourself, ‘What am I good at? What are my gifts?’ Then turn to the world outside. Ask what the world needs, what someone with your skills and passions could do to contribute. Bring all that together, and you’re on the path to a good and meaningful life.

And one more thing. Find a way, somehow, to make the world a little bit better in your own personal way. A way that’s true to yourself. A way that brings a little bit of light into the darkness.

That’s how you write a truly meaningful story with your life.

‘I had a marvelous beginning’

With a childhood in two beautiful but very different places, I had a marvelous beginning. The first part of my childhood was in a small town in Massachusetts, surrounded by apple orchards and lots of New England history. Later, we moved to a ranch in Colorado, where the mountains, streams, and boundless blue sky won my heart. My siblings and I spent plenty of time outside, exploring and climbing trees and hiking. And lots of time reading and imagining. It was a magical childhood, with nature and creativity so integrated into our lives.

My parents were both from Jewish immigrant families who came to the US from Europe in the early 20th century. Their families wound up in Boston, and that’s where they met and where I was born. I was very lucky in the parent department. My dad was a profoundly good and trustworthy man, a small business person with a great sense of humour. My mother was more serious and philosophical, a lifelong educator with endless curiosity who never stopped learning. As different as they were, they had a great thing going and were married for over 50 years. They both loved the West, and in their 50s, when I was 12, they decided to move us all out to Colorado.

Stories always called to me, whether a tale around the campfire or a novel by Dickens. In fifth grade, I wrote and published my own little magazine, The Idiot’s Odyssey. Silly stuff, but fun. When I wrote a fake exposé about what really happened in the teachers’ lounge, it turned out that some of it was a bit too close to the truth and I got in trouble. But I had loyal fans who bought the magazine, and you could say that issue was my first bestseller.

‘To grow in all the ways I could, to make a positive difference somehow’

I chose Princeton largely because it had beautiful trees and walkways and incredible stone facades that felt like castles, all surrounded by lovely countryside. I had no idea what I wanted to study, so I explored a wide variety of subjects. Like most high achievers, I’d learned to work for whatever was the next applause line, yet that grew increasingly unsatisfying. Everybody expected I would run for student body president, but I was walking across campus one night and I thought, ‘What am I really doing with my life?’ What I wanted most was to try new things, to grow in all the ways I could, to make a positive difference somehow, and to stop seeking that applause. So I changed directions. I registered for the teacher training programme and taught in Princeton public schools. I took guitar lessons. I trained for a marathon, going for long runs in the countryside. I even started a poetry club, where we read everything from Wordsworth to Li Bai to Dr. Seuss.

My decision to apply for the Rhodes Scholarship came after a trip to Europe with my brother — the first time either of us had ever travelled out of the USA. When we visited Oxford, we climbed up the tower of University Church to experience the view. Immediately I felt moved by all the wonderful layers of history around us, history I wanted to understand. So I fell in love with Oxford, and resolved to try to return.

‘Magical, deep, wondrous places’

As a student at Oxford, I had forgiving tutors who understood that, for me, the greatest learning was happening elsewhere. Outside of the curriculum, and often outside of Oxford. For example, I noticed there was probably ten minutes of lapsed time between the first and last bells around Oxford, so I cooked up a challenge to find the one place where I could hear the most bells chiming at midnight. I dragged several friends with me, took notes, and ultimately figured it out. But that’s not something I’m going to reveal. Anyone who likes the idea of this quest this needs to discover for themselves!

Of course, it wasn’t about the bells. It was about exploring Oxford, discovering my surroundings, and also myself. My best education came from great conversations with friends, meeting people with amazing expertise in all sorts of unusual areas, or even simply going for a soulful walk in the Oxford countryside. One of my favourite destinations was in Wytham Woods, a track called the Singing Way, where centuries ago, the pilgrims would walk from Oxford to Canterbury, singing as they went. To this day, the path is still lined by ancient beech trees that embrace the whole path, and when I walk down there, if I listen closely, I can almost hear the voices of those pilgrims. Oxford is surrounded by magical, wondrous places like that.

Back then, in the 1970s, you could buy a cheap airline ticket to go all the way around the world. Yearning to travel, I took a year out of the Scholarship and just went exploring. I did odd jobs, trekked in the Himalayas (where I got very ill), and helped a friend to rebuild an old thatched roof farmhouse in rural Japan. I camped in the Serengeti, explored the Seychelle Islands, visited the Taj Mahal on a full moon night, and rode the Trans-Siberian Railway. During that year, I decided to write my first novel. When I finished it, I thought, ‘This will kick off my whole writing career. Some lucky publisher is going to get this, and I’ll be able to live on a mountain somewhere and write books.’

‘I knew I would regret it if I didn’t try again to write’

Well, my novel had a uniformly and resoundingly clear reception. It was rejected by every single publisher. And some of those letters were not very kind. So I needed a plan B, and I decided to go to law school. I had an idea of going to work for an environmental organisation, but I soon realised I would never get hired for that kind of job straight out of law school. So I leaped over to business school, and to my surprise, found some likeminded souls there. I formed a club, the Square Peg Society of Harvard Business School, for others like me who didn’t want to follow traditional career paths. It was basically group therapy in an otherwise inhospitable environment.

After that I went to work at a small private equity and venture capital firm that was trying to start companies, some of them in the environmental field. Eventually I wound up as president of the firm. Then a strange thing happened. The busier I got, the more successful we became, the more I would seek out time in nature, and also time to write. I would get up before five and write at the kitchen counter, and I found great solace in that quiet creative time. By then I had also met Currie, my wonderful soulmate. All of that, plus my strong awareness of mortality, gave me the courage and clarity to quit the firm. My partners and investors thought I was a complete lunatic, but I knew I would regret it if I didn’t try again to write.

That was three decades ago — and 32 books ago. I feel blessed a thousand times over to be able to do what I do, work that’s very hard but also true to my soul and deeply meaningful.

‘The power to create stories is our defining human quality’

I’ve really come to believe that the power to create stories is our defining human quality. It’s the one thing we can do that no other species does. Stories contain our biggest ideas, our deepest values, our scariest fears, our greatest dreams. And stories are found in every culture, every language, and every place, time, religion, and geography. Just to be a small part of that vast sweep of stories over time, such a fundamental human experience, feels like a gift.

Aside from my epic fantasy novels, one of my favourite book projects is The Hero’s Trail, a non-fiction book about courageous young people. I wrote it after meeting a young woman at a book event in Ohio. Grimly, she told me that kids never do anything valuable and are powerless to change the world. She was so full of sadness and cynicism, it made me want to write about all the brave, inspiring kids in real life. Kids from every background and description who are doing positive things. That’s also what led me to create the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, which spotlights courageous, public spirited kids. It’s named for my mother, a lifelong educator who had a beautiful ability to help people be their best selves in the world.

My ultimate goal is to encourage the wonderful, courageous, caring young people in our midst. To remind them that their choices matter. Their passions matter. Their lives matter.

All of my work, in whatever form, amounts to that — encouraging young people to write a truly meaningful story with their lives.

‘We are, each of us, a single drop of water in a great, endlessly circling sea’

There is light all around us. Let us take in that light humbly and gratefully, and then give it back, in a way that adds a little bit of goodness and beauty into this world that so needs those qualities.

We have a certain amount of time, and we have our soul. The question is, what are we going to do with those gifts? So, what does my time and my soul really yearn to be, and what is its deeper reason for existence? What meaning am I going to put into it?

We can’t just take meaning off a shelf, like reaching and grabbing a book. It doesn’t work that way. We must go inside and discover, ‘Okay, what really is that spark, and why am I here?’ And getting to answer that for oneself is a lifelong quest that’s full of challenge and heartache and tragedy and mystery and deep meaning and moments of triumph and humour and love and community, and a sense of being part of all of it, being one with all forms of life.

That’s why I feel, ultimately, that the best metaphor for meaning in life is this:

We are, each of us, a single drop of water, and we come from a great, endlessly circling sea, an ocean of spirit that’s out there and also in us. We have all that connection to the wider ocean, but we’re just a single drop. Yet every drop matters. And what we do with that drop is up to us. That’s our opportunity, and that’s our gift.

The goal of life is to somehow find a way to make our one drop of life a bit brighter, so when it finally goes back into that eternal sea, it adds just a little smidge of light. That’s how, over time, we can brighten the whole ocean.

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