Max Howard Peters

Max Howard Peters, beloved husband, father, and adventurer, died at age 75 on January 12, 2025, in Roseville, California, after a long illness. He was born on May 12, 1949, in New York City to Jerry and Evelyn Peters. A childhood trip to Vermont through the Fresh Air Fund—a charity bringing inner-city children to nature—sparked in Max a lifelong reverence for the outdoors. Later, his family's move to Connecticut deepened his connection to the woods and fields that became his sanctuary and inspiration.

After high school, Max left home to explore Canada and the United States, often by hitchhiking and hopping on trains. Along the way, he had vivid adventures and was notorious for serendipitously crossing paths with a colorful array of celebrities and notable figures. A member of the 1960s radical counterculture movement, Max spent the Summer of Love in San Francisco’s Haight- Ashbury district and attended the legendary Woodstock Festival of 1969.

In 1972, Max met his future wife Ruth on her 20th birthday and had an immediate spiritual certainty that they were soulmates. They were engaged after their first private conversation, before Ruth even knew his full name. Ruth and Max were happily married for 51 years and had four children.

As an experienced outdoorsman, Max approached nature with a curious and reverent spirit. He would often choose to sleep under the stars and knew how to call owls, start a fire in the rain, and tell the exact time of day from the position of the sun. As a musician, Max performed unique musical stand-up comedy routines in small venues in Los Angeles and the Pacific Northwest with his guitar and jew’s harp. His creative and inquisitive spirit extended to a wide range of passions, including music, art, history, literature, philosophy, ecology, antiques, social justice, and Indigenous rights.

Max’s entrepreneurial ventures reflected his many interests. Max founded an independent petroleum company in Montana and launched several magazines, including Survival Rights, Ecology Digest, Valley Road and Race, Western Seedstock Connection, Murieta Country, and CTOldHouse.com. He contributed to various publications, including The Los Angeles Times, Sporting Classics, and The Stockton Record, was a prolific poet, and authored independently-published booklets on philosophy, with a focus on the existentialists Kirkegaard, Sartre, and Camus.

Max was predeceased by his parents and his younger brother, Richard. He is survived by Ruth, his wife of 51 years, his four children, Alexis, Eliot (and wife Stephanie), Dwight, and Galina, four grandchildren, and his brother, Ed. He also leaves his beloved little dog, Ralphie.

For anyone desiring to contribute to a charity in his memory, Habitat for Humanity addresses Max’s concern about the issue of housing.

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