John Conrad Bernstein has definite ideas about rural preservation.
Pulling his car off onto the berm of a rural Baltimore County road, he points to a house on top of a bald ridge across Worthington Valley. That, he says, is a vulgarity of rural landscape planning.
"If you build one lone house on top of a ridge, even if it conforms to the zoning, it changes the character of the landscape," he explains.
Traditionally, rural houses weren't built on top of ridges or hills, he says. They were built in the valleys.
Mr. Bernstein, 41, will bring those sensibilities to his new job as executive director of the Valleys Planning Council, the oldest and most influential land-preservation organization in Baltimore County.
The council keeps a close and protective watch over preservation of the Green Spring, Caves and Worthington valleys beyond the Beltway and the area of Hunt Valley west of Interstate 83.
Not that long ago, Mr. Bernstein was conducting highly sensitive experiments on the effects of chemicals on living brain cells.
He was Dr. Bernstein then, but, despite the medical degree, he prefers not to be addressed as "doctor" now.
On Jan. 1, Mr. Bernstein takes over as head of the council, replacing Margaret Worrell who is stepping down to pursue other interests.
So how does a Baltimore City guy who grew up in the Bronx, N.Y., who was schooled in neurology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and who restores woodwork using 18th- and 19th-century hand tools wind up as executive director of a land-preservation group?
"I've always been interested in preserving old things and old ways ever since I was a kid," said Mr. Bernstein.
He remembers the anger he felt at 12 when developers wanted to turn a 15-acre woods and an 18th-century tavern into a development of townhouses and 20-story apartment buildings in the Bronx.
"My parents and other adults in the neighborhood shrugged their shoulders and chalked it up to the price of progress," Mr. Bernstein said.
"I just couldn't accept that."
One of his main goals as director is to meet with developers and their engineers and see if there is a way to make the adversarial development process less acrimonious.
"I'm not looking to compromise the principles of the Valleys Planning Council, however," said Mr. Bernstein, who emphasized that his ideas and goals have to be adopted by the council's board of directors.
Mr. Bernstein said he applied for the job as director of the council because of its reputation for making sure that zoning laws are enforced.
"The council has the power to influence what happens in what I consider one of the most extraordinary areas in the mid-Atlantic region," said Mr. Bernstein.
But land conservation was not the career path down which he initially walked.
He came to Baltimore to attend Hopkins' medical school
"I really didn't have my heart set on it, but that was what my parents wanted," he said. His mother, Dr. Virginia Lubkin, was one of the first female eye surgeons in the country.
From his father, Martin Bernstein, a retired musicologist from New York University, he inherited musical talent, and he plays classical piano and violin for his own enjoyment.
He developed his appreciation of woodworking on his own, and, while he was in medical school, he took a two-year leave of absence to restore Victorian houses with a Scandinavian cabinetmaker in Seattle.
"He was a cranky old guy who insisted that you learn to use hand tools from past centuries before learning to use the machine tools of today," said Mr. Bernstein.
Returning from Seattle, Mr. Bernstein finished medical school in 1982, did an internship at University Hospital and a grueling, two-year stint as a Hopkins neurology fellow, studying the effect of chemicals on the brain cells of laboratory rats.
"He was a brilliant and capable physician and in everything else he did, but you could tell he had the air of someone who was trying to work out exactly what it was he wanted to do in life," said Dr. Robert S. Fisher, who was then director of the neurology lab and now heads the epilepsy center at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Ariz.
Even before his work at the hopkins lab was over, Mr. Bernstein had started his own restoration company, Mount Washington Woodworking. Eventually he decided that was what he wanted to do.
He took a job restoring a 17th-century farm house near St. Michaels.
He bought and restored the historic Carroll Hunting Lodge, a stone house in Mount Washington, and took on other restoration jobs using antique hand tools.
"John is a master craftsman, an artist with woodwork," said Martin P. Azola, a Maryland authority on historical restoration.
His passion for the historic led him to take drives through Baltimore County, looking for historic or architecturally significant buildings and eventually became a member of the county chapter of Maryland Historical Trust.
"I would like to see more coordination between the council and other groups in the county working to preserve the rural landscape," said Mr. Bernstein.
He said the county is fortunate in that it has some of the most progressive zoning laws in the country. But, he added, it takes more than zoning to preserve the rural landscape.
"I think that developers, engineers and homeowners themselves should stop and think about what they are doing and how it impacts the whole countryside," he said.
If he has to getting into touchy areas to get that point across, those who know Mr. Bernstein say he won't stand on the sidelines.
"When John has strong views on something, he'll speak his mind without hesitation," said Mr. Azola.
John G. McGrain, county historian and executive director of the Baltimore County Landmarks Preservation Commission, said he feels that Mr. Bernstein is up to the task.
"He's a very capable person to fill that job," said Mr. McGrain.
Said Mr. Azola: "John Bernstein lives, breathes and eats preservation.
"His interest truly comes directly from the heart."