Steve was born in 1952 on the Nine Mile Ranger Station in Northwest Montana at a time when the heralded mule remount station was being phased out with the advent of more dependable airplanes. At its prime the remount station was home to over fifteen hundred mules and horses used to service the network of lookouts and the needs of remote fire fighting. His dad, Robert Smart, was the ranger for the Forest Service and the family followed him to Troy, Montana and then on to Coeur'd Alene, Idaho. The next move was a big one, moving to Alexandria, Virginia just outside of Washington D.C. where the Department of Agriculture is headquartered. There he would enjoy hiking in the woods and playing football with a segregated group of boys that would eventually win the Virginia State Championship and later the story of the team would be made into the Movie "Remember the Titans" with Denzel Washingtion. The last big move was to Colville, Washington where Steve's father took the job of Supervisor of the Colville National Forest. It was these pre college days that Steve went to work on the Knight Ranch and got into horseback riding and farming. Today Steve lives in Spokane and has a wife and two sons. He is a successful Landscape Architect, with a landscape company called Environment West and a nursery and coffee shop called Smart Gardens.