I write well on the road. I have the energy, I have the motivation to write. I'm happy when I'm on the road.

I'm not very interested in telling the facts. I have a lot of investment in telling the truth.

Traveling is my priority, because it drives the writing, so I teach around the travel, and sometimes the travel is the teaching.

I always think, when I'm in motion, writing seems like the most natural thing.

When I was a little kid, I used to walk miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles of railroad tracks.

I've always traveled. I'm a professor in a limited way. I teach one class two quarters out of four, so I get traveling done.

Sometimes no matter how well you prepare, no matter how conservative your decision making, no matter how few Y chromosomes are along on your trip, you can still find yourself in a mud slide or a hurricane without a dry piece of clothing to your name. But those of us who have given our time and usually our hearts to outdoorsmen over the years know that, for many of them, it's not really a wilderness trip unless, MacGyver-like, they have to make a fire out of a pair of shorts, a glow stick, and a ketchup bottle; it's not really an adventure until someone gets airlifted out.