Andy Lipkis

* Founder and president of TreePeople, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving Southern California’s forests.

Prep Work: I love to cook, so I’ll start early Friday morning making a batch of bread. Then I go off to the farmers market on Venice Boulevard and get fresh produce for a feast--Japanese or Thai or Indian. I would love to have as guests the families of my 14-year-old daughter’s friends.

Nature Calls: Saturday evening, I’d prepare a picnic from Friday’s leftovers and other stuff and go to the Mark Taper Foundation Amphitheater at Coldwater Canyon Park, this wildly intimate 99-seat amphitheater. It happens to be where TreePeople’s headquarters are, and there are great performances on summer weekends, usually starting in June. It’s like a totally intimate Hollywood Bowl. You bring your blanket and picnic and listen to music or a theatrical reading. It’s so much the best of L.A. in the hills on a warm summer evening.

Biking and Birding: I like to wake up early Sunday, before my family, and bike down Ballona Creek, through the wetlands and then down the beach bike path. In the wetlands I get to see great blue herons and egrets and kingfishers. When I’m early enough, along the beach I see dolphins and an occasional whale.

Sandy Brunch: My dream Sunday would take me to Back on the Beach in Santa Monica. The restaurant is in one of these beach parking lots and you sit out on the sand. The kids can play on the beach, you have a lovely brunch and relax and read the paper. Then I might take my 8-year-old son sea kayaking in the marina. In Fisherman’s Village there’s a boat dock where they rent kayaks by the hour. It’s wonderful to pop in, no reservations or anything, and paddle around in peacefulness.

At the Beach S’more: I’d finish off with a cookout at Dockweiler Beach, where they have fire pits, and get a few families together. Dockweiler is at the end of Imperial Highway, below the end of the LAX runways. But it’s also the place where you can have a bonfire on the beach and make s’mores.