I was born in Ohio and grew up in Cincinnati where I felt the call of the wild from reading Jack London stories. So, the day after I graduated from high school, I left on a cross-country trip an then enlisted in the US Army. I spent the next four cycles-of-seasons in the Far North as an Arctic Light-Infantryman/Reconaissance Soldier. Now I have some Jack London stories of my own and even had the chance to pass an afternoon in a cabin built with his own hands in some lonely wood in the Yukon. I shall never forget the majestic beauty of that rugged land and the ethereal backdrop of the aurora borealis snaking across the sky in neon colours. But the chill in my bones had gone deep and I decided to thaw those bones in the wild heat of the Caribbean. It is here that I lost track of time for several years. We can blame rum if we like, but the truth is that the sun beat down and the world slipped away...for a while. Until I hitchiked across the Caribbean with two strangers on a small boat without a motor. It was on this journey that I began to feel again the spinning of the Earth and awaken to its whirl. Since those days I have touched the continents and have found what I love to do: travel and help others animate their own travels. This simple statement has been the unifying sentiment of my adult life. Whether it be my long-career as an adventure travel guide, a product developer, as a writer/photographer, and even as a scholar, I have been motivated to wander among the many features of this pale, blue dot we call a home and to learn of what it is. And I must say I live to dare my surroundings and push my own understanding of what is real...even if that means I have to get lost, sometimes very lost, before I'm allowed anything transcendental. It means something to me to be comfortable in times of great unfamiliarity and to let my faith in the greatly abstract guide me to a place beyond reason or logic. May personal discovery stretch on forever.