Morgan Bulkeley was born in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, in 1944. He was raised on a small farm in the town of Mount Washington, where his parents, both naturalists, raised many wild, orphaned animals. He graduated from Yale University in 1966 with a B.A. in English Literature. After a stint in the Coast Guard, he spent a year in Newark, New Jersey, drawing, and working with VISTA programs. Subsequently, he spent 14 years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, painting and sculpting. In 1985, he returned to his childhood home, where he lives with his environmentalist wife Eleanor Tillinghast.