As a young man, looking back at 30 and more frequently looking ahead and wondering what life might hold for me in the years to come, talking to Kathy Chrestensen was a wonderful lesson in what might be possible.

I had called her at her Edmonds home to talk about the film company she and her husband Robert had recently formed, Crest Pictures, and their latest project, “The Irate Birdwatcher.”

My wife and I, both constantly engaged with the struggle between paying the rent and doing things we find worthwhile and beautiful, listened to Kathy on the phone, envious and inspired, as she told us of her decades of travel and outdoor adventure.

Though she tells me “we’re really old, you know,” the Chrestensen’s decision a few years ago to launch a film company dedicated to promoting wilderness conservation smacks of the exuberance and bravery of youth.

Celebration of heroes is another trait of the young and passionate, and the Chrestensen’s new documentary film, “The Irate Birdwatcher,” is all about that.

The heroes in it are legendary conservationist Harvey Manning, and the parks, mountains and rivers of Washington.

Fittingly, “Birdwatcher” had its world premiere in Issaquah last year, hosted by the Foothills Branch of The Mountaineers, a group with strong personal connections to Manning and the trails he blazed.

And now it comes to the small screen. The documentary will air on KCTS April 1 at 10:30 a.m., followed by further showings on April 5 and 11. For more information on schedules, visit www.kcts9.org/tvschedule.

The clearly stated purpose of the film itself is to remind us all why the conservation of these areas is so important, and why champions of nature like Manning must be remembered and thanked by continuing efforts to preserve and maintain what limited areas of unspoiled beauty we have left.

For those few not familiar with the “Issaquah Wildman,” as he was known, Manning was a charismatic outdoorsman, author of trails guides, and one-time editor of Mountaineer books. It was he who first used the term “Issaquah Alps,” and he co-founded the trails club there that has since picked up where he left off.

But he is known particularly as a dogged and colorful advocate of many wilderness areas and trails, including the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River, Little Si, Big Si, Rattlesnake Mountain, Tiger Mountain, Cougar Mountain, the North Cascades National Park, and the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area. He was also instrumental in getting the Washington Wilderness Act of 1984 passed.

Though most hikers today, myself included, often take it for granted that these are places free from the threat of development, this was not always the case, and it is thanks entirely to the, often unpopular and misunderstood, efforts of people like Manning that this future feels at least somewhat secure.

When he died in 2006, he was mourned, far and wide. In his home town of Issaquah, they built a life-sized bronze statue of the man.

“So long as there are ancient forests wanted by loggers, wild rivers wanted by dammers, and flower meadows wanted by miners, the crusade must continue to put more hikers, more defenders, more crusaders on the fragile land,” Manning once wrote.

It is sentiments like these that we hear in “The Irate Birdwatcher,” given voice by actor Earl Prebezac and illustrated by the stunning videography of Robert Chrestensen.

The Chrestensen’s shot the footage for the movie during eight years of hiking and backpacking around Mt Rainier, the Cascades, and the Olympics, where Manning first trekked as a boy scout.

The idea for a Manning film came out of a project the Chrestensen’s completed in 2006, “Below the Clouds – Rainier Impressions.”

After doing a lot of backpacking in their native California as a younger couple, the Christensen’s life took them along other routes before they got back into hiking and camping in 2001, here in the Northwest.

“Robert had taken up the video camera, and at first we just wanted to record our experiences for our own benefit,” Kathy said. “After four years of hiking around Mt Rainier, we had some beautiful footage.”

In 2006 they edited the footage into a short documentary and submitted it to KCTS 9’s showcase for Pacific Northwest, independent documentaries, “About Us.”

“That was the year, ‘06, that the storms devastated Mt Rainier and the Olympics,” Kathy remembered. And so their film became an important document of what the area had looked like, before it was changed by the violence of weather.

In the following years, the Chrestensen’s used “Rainier Impressions” as a tool to promote trail work and conservation. As members of Conservation Northwest and strong supporters of the Leave No Trace philosophy, the film was a perfect illustration of why such work was important. It became popular viewing among hikers, and they decided to make it available for purchase.

“That was when we got in touch with Harvey,” Kathy said. “We sent it to him to preview. We just wanted to get his opinion, to see what he thought. He wrote back and said that he liked it, and we put his quote on the DVD box.”

The interaction with Manning led the Chestensen’s to wonder if the famous conservationist himself might be an appropriate subject for their next film.

By this stage they had many hours of new footage, all of it celebrating the areas that Manning had done so much to protect.

They wrote him a letter.

“We basically said that he could use the footage however he wanted,” Kathy said. “It could be a soapbox, it could be whatever he felt he wanted to do. We knew he was ill. But we didn’t know how ill he was.”

Manning passed away. He had read the Chrestensen’s final letter but had not had time to respond.

“We mourned. Everybody mourned.”

A few months later and the idea of a film celebrating Manning’s impact on the state’s wilderness seemed all the more important.

“I said, I don’t want this idea to die,” Kathy said. “So I pitched it to Betty, his wife, and she said ‘go for it.’”

With a firm vision still eluding them, the Chrestensen’s began to read everything by Manning they could get their hands on.

They became captivated with not just the passion of his advocacy but also the beauty of his writing.

“We began taking quotes from his writings, there were so many,” Kathy said. “With these we began to make a story about wilderness preservation.”

Though the film begins in Marmot Pass, where Manning first discovered his love of the wilderness, Kathy is sure to point out that the film is not a biography.

“The story is conservation,” she said. “It is his story, but in a different kind of way.”

For more information on “The Irate Birdwatcher,” visit www.crestpictures.com.