Mrs. Sage led a career as a professor of English and a staff member of several Texas-based higher education agencies and associations. She now lives outside Alpine and has been active in a variety of conservation efforts there, chief among them co-founding, organizing, and leading the new Sierra Club Big Bend regional group. She and the new Sierra group have been engaged in several projects, including restoring the air quality of the Big Bend (where visibility of over 100 miles now falls to less than 10 at times), fighting proposals to dispose of radioactive waste in west Texas, and looking for more sustainable water options for the area. She also finds time to write poetry, sometimes about the natural world around her.