Pulitzer Prize-winning poet bought a barren land in Hawaii and turned it into a 19-acre forest with more than 3,000 palms

An acclaimed American poet laureate, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author, environmental activist and literary translator, W.S. Merwin held many titles throughout his life. But what he held even more closely was his love for nature. The poet who moved to Maui in the 1970s, to study Zen Buddhism ended up buying a barren parcel of land and transforming it into a 19-acre palm forest that lives and breathes to this day, according to a report by The Merwin Conservancy.W.S. MerwinOne of America's most decorated poets, Merwin published over 50 books in his lifetime and translated dozens more.Born in New York City in 1927, and raised in New Jersey and Scranton, Pennsylvania, Merwin was the son of a Presbyterian minister. “I started writing hymns for my father almost as soon as I could write at all,” he said about his development as a writer. He attended Princeton University. “It was not until I had received a scholarship and gone away to the university that I began to read poetry steadily and try incessantly, and with abiding desperation, to write it,” he said in an interview.After graduating from Princeton, he moved to Europe and worked as a translator and tutor, first for the royal fam...