Forest pathology is a small subdiscipline of plant pathology that has waxed and waned since the time I naively stumbled into it 45 years ago. I managed to stay in the field, in spite of some setbacks, by taking some career risks and veering off the path when necessary. Along the way, supportive mentors, solid graduate programs, and fellow students gave me the confidence to take on new and controversial challenges. The most rewarding projects led to the discovery and description of new tree diseases. It has been a privilege to work with great colleagues and students from around the world, with fungi from all the continents, from the level of forest landscapes to fungal genetics, a field that advanced from the crudest of genetic markers to the development of PCR and inexpensive genome analyses. It has been an incredible period of change, and I am grateful for all the unlikely events that brought me here.