Peter May grew up in southeastern Michigan and received a B.S. in Architecture from the University of Michigan, specializing in biological building systems, native permaculture, and sustainable landscape design. His work has included designing and building passive solar houses and greenhouses that heat and cool themselves, creating and implementing land and fire management plans for small and large parcels of land.

His projects have included fire mitigation, native species restoration, stream restoration, hazardous fuel reduction, forest health restoration, Nordic ski trail design, as well as others. An emerging design perspective that he is using is known called Integrated Land Management.

He is also a mountain guide, raft guide, kayaker, and an avid skier.

He is a National Wildfire Coordination Group Task Force Leader and Type II Burn Boss, and has responded to local, regional, and national wildfires and other emergencies since 1993. He created a fire department in 2003, which is still in place today. He has used cultural, prescribed fire to restore/return native plant species in Colorado, Iowa, and Michigan.

His current interest is in restoring the lost ecological keystone and indicator species and their relative habitats, such as beavers and Monarch butterflies. He also utilizes recovered forest materials from stewardship projects to create wellness tonics and formulations. He is especially interested in revealing the correlation between beavers, forest health, and relative fire danger.