Just about everybody dreams of what they’d like to be when they grow up, but only a lucky few actually realize that dream. Stan Tekiela, coordinator of and naturalist for Eden Prairie’s Outdoor Center, is one of those people.

As far back as he can remember Tekiela has had a consuming love of nature. Today, he not only runs a nature center, he is also a successful nature writer and wildlife photographer. “I’ve made it,” he says, when asked what his future goals are. “I’ve achieved what I wanted to do.” It’s an enviable situation, but Tekiela knows that the reason he was able to create a life he loves was because of his determination to work ceaselessly to get it.

It was his dad who inspired him, Tekiela says. Growing up in Chicago, he recalls how his dad would take walks in the forest preserve not far from their house and come back with a big bag of edible mushrooms. “He was a nature nut, too,” Tekiela says. “And I thought it was so cool that he could go out and identify those things and bring them home for us to eat.” As a boy, Tekiela made his own field journal (which he still has) by filling a three-ring-binder with blank paper on which he jotted observations about nature and drew pictures of the birds, flowers and animal tracks he saw in the woods.

After moving to Minnesota in 1977, Tekiela got to know Kathy Heidel, a naturalist working at the Lowry Nature Center in Victoria. Seeing his desire to learn, Heidel took the young Tekiela under her wing, teaching him everything she knew about wild edible plants. By the early 1980s, Tekiela was teaching his own classes part time at Lowry on subjects ranging from wild edible plants to birding and tracking. In 1990, he got his start at Eden Prairie’s Outdoor Center, which had only been open one year, as a naturalist, teaching classes to kids and adults.

While working as a naturalist, he attended the University of Minnesota, earning a degree in natural history with an emphasis on avian ecology. He was also busy writing field guides and other nature books for his longtime publisher, Cambridge, Minn.-based Adventure Publications. All the while, he was making ends meet by working as a paramedic for Hennepin County Medical Center. “It was really late in the ’90s when it finally all came together for me,” Tekiela says. “I had enough books out and the city asked me to run the nature center. Being a paramedic taught me how short and fragile life can be. We get one life and I’m taking my best shot.”

At the center, where he works part time, Tekiela handles some administrative tasks, but he also gets to continue his work as a naturalist. He still teaches classes and also leads nature trips to places all over the Upper Midwest several times each year. On one recent journey, he and other like-minded souls got to see and interact with whooping cranes, which are now an endangered species. This month, he will be heading up a four-day trip to Nebraska for the annual migration of the sandhill crane.

Today, Tekiela lives in Victoria with his wife, Katherine, and the couple’s 10-year-old daughter, Abby. Much of the time Tekiela can be found at home writing. It’s not unusual for him to work on four to six books at one time. Recently, he finished a book about owls and four Texas field guides. As usual, his research included traveling to the places he was writing about. “I find no joy in sitting behind a computer and writing,” he says. “I have to get out and find the animals and see what they do and photograph them. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”