"As bears go, so goes humanity." So says Placitas entrepreneur and environmentalist Joshua Peine, whose latest project is development of Laughing Bear Ranch near his adobe in the Sandia foothills. The three-acre property, which includes an ancient arroyo called Ojo del Oso (Eye of the Bear), will serve both as a nature conservancy and as home to Clear Light Cedar Company, the firm Josh founded 15 years ago.
    With a surname that sounds like "pine," Josh was perhaps destined to take up residence amid the evergreens which now set the tone for his life and livelihood. To get closer to the earth, he abandoned first his native New York and then Hollywood, where he accumulated film credits as a Warner Brothers contract player and became a television series leading man. The glitz was not for him. "I wanted to be a farmer," Josh says, explaining why he established a landscaping business on the West Coast and subsequently moved to the Southwest to study nature's ways among the Navajo and Hopi. His Indian mentors taught Josh the therapeutic benefits of cedar, which not only protects clothing and food from insect attack but also soothes body and spirit. "The Indians used cedar in their healing ceremonies," Josh recalls, "and I experienced its effects first-hand."
    After he hit on a method of drying cedar needles, which preserves their greenness and efficacy for years, Josh began packaging the needles in sachets for friends, such as Peter Fonda. They promptly called for more. These sachets remain the mainstay of his business and now are sold throughout the world, along with other cedar-based products Josh describes as "lotions and potions." His letters from customers read like fan mail. National publicity has also come his way, in the form of a feature in July's issue of Metropolitan Home magazine.
    Linked to his passion for cedar is Joshua's deep interest in bears. "I learned about both from the Indians, who regard them as sacred," Josh says. "Cedar is medicine and bears are just as important to survival, providing food and clothing including chiefs' ceremonial robes. Universally through North America, bear symbols appear on the earliest artifacts. But now there are only about 600 brown bears left."
    Josh sees the same thoughtlessness in the destruction of New Mexico's fragile arroyos and means to fight back by restoring his own. "I want to enhance a segment of North Central Rio Grande ecology," he enthuses, "by making water more accessible to birds and other wildlife, by conducting erosion control studies and finding remedies and by creating a nature walk so everyone can enjoy this fragile landscape."
    Though the details are different, the essence of Joshua's intentions today is the same as it was during his career as an actor. He fondly remembers an older performer who told him: "Acting is doing something for people that they can't do for themselves at that moment."

City Magazine August/September 1987