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He then leads us down a path through the woods, walking briskly, always a few steps ahead of us, his prominent head slightly bowed and thrust out beyond his large feet. With his long, fly-away silver hair, Birkenstocks and socks, and tightly wound intensity, he looks the part of the harried academic. He turns back to let us catch up, then moves on again, talking and gesturing, unconsciously lurching far beyond us again.

We arrive at a small yurt, which Meadows and some colleagues constructed under the direction of a yurt master during a 12-day retreat in the summer of 1997. As he shows his old friend the round, wooden structure, he is as excited as a small boy leading his mother to a tower he has just built. It is another tribute to Evelyn Browne, fellow builder of yurts, yet, as with most of what Meadows does, it serves an important function.

"This is a good place to come for a debriefing when you're done with an intense program," he tells us. "The shape of the structure is conducive to focusing the energy inward. The key, of course, is to reflect on how you're going to bring what you've learned into your life and work."

The Browne Center is not the only incarnation of the Meadows magic. On university campuses, with their labyrinths of political hierarchies and mind-numbingly slow administrative processes, it can be a challenge to get things done. The challenge is even greater at UNH, where good ideas and intentions can be snuffed out with a single blow of the budget ax. Yet Meadows is a master at finessing the system, at forging fruitful alliances and of obtaining large sums of grant money that can propel his agenda forward at--academically speaking--light speed. If he believes in an idea, he will likely put his power behind it.

A good example is the experience of Durham resident and creative dance teacher Beth Olshansky, who several years ago was worried about her children, who were lagging behind in their reading and writing skills. She began to experiment with her own and the neighborhood children, trying to find fun, creative ways to strengthen their skills. She discovered that when she integrated movement techniques and visual arts into her teaching, the children made rapid progress.

Meadows heard about Olshansky's work and approached her about the possibility of enlarging its scope. The first step, he told her, was to gather empirical evidence to see whether her methods actually worked. "I was very skeptical. I thought, how can you research a creative endeavor?," she says.

Meadows donated time and money from the institute to test Olshansky's methods in the public schools. The U.S. Department of Education eventually judged her work to be an "innovative, effective literacy program" and provided a four-year dissemination grant which vaulted the program to the national level; teachers in 33 states and three U.S. territories have now been trained in her techniques. The "Image-Making Within the Writing Process" program is now part of Meadows's institute, with Olshansky serving as a project director for the Laboratory for Interactive Learning.

"I've gone from working on my back porch to a time-and-a-half job running training programs around the country, and I owe it all to Dennis," Olshansky says. "He is a person who manifests things; he sees no limits. I never would have had the confidence or the vision to make it happen on my own."

While Dennis Meadows may see no limits to human potential, he is gravely concerned about mankind's ability to observe the limits of the earth's finite resources. Last year he was named one of the world's 100 most influential futurists, experts in the science of the future, on a list that includes Isaac Newton, Galileo, Darwin and Einstein. His inclusion on this list stems in part from his co-authorship of The Limits to Growth, and its sequel, Beyond the Limits, which raise the frightening specter of global collapse.

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