The romance of America’s wildest landscapes captured me at an early age. Camping with the Boy Scouts, road tripping to the American National Parks as a teenager with my family, rock climbing with college buddies, and innumerable hikes in fields and forests left an indelible mark on me. Through graduate school, the raising of a family, and the start of a career I have felt the call of the wilderness, even if I have not always been able to respond. But, no matter the distractions of life, I find myself always returning to the mountains.
I know there are more adventuresome people than me out there. This blog is not about expeditions sponsored by National Geographic or new feats of extreme athleticism, although I love to read about those things. What it is about is my love of the natural world and my ever returning to it. Every trip, it seems, brings new discoveries both inside and out.
For my day job, I am a professor of ecology at the University of Georgia. More about that is available on my professional website. I have three lovely children, all teenagers now. My siblings were each themselves smitten with the great outdoors in their own ways. As we are scattered, I expect they will be following this blog with some interest (and the occasional raised eyebrow) to see what I am up to. As a hobbyist, I have dabbled in quite a lot of things. These days, I like to read (especially biography), I collect fountain pens, and I am an avid, if uncompetitive, runner.