NEW PHOTO – About (old)

Welcome to A World Beyond! I’ve created this place to share our family’s love of nature and wilderness with you. Our intent is to inspire you to venture out into the wild and find the clarity that these majestic settings are sure to bring. Maybe you have believed it’s too hard or rough, or it that it’s just not for you. 

I understand how you feel. Until a few years ago I was the same way. I’ve had the good fortune to enjoy a lifetime of travel that has given me priceless experiences. My work for international businesses provided the opportunity to visit countries and cultures throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. I’ve seen amazing architecture and history, and have met people from many walks of life. In my late twenties I took an assignment to live in Japan for six months, which gave me an invaluable perspective of the world.

Later, as my sons Jeremy and Alex grew older, and I settled down with my new wife Janet, and extended family, we created fresh memories cruising through tropical islands and dreaming the time away on the beautiful beaches of the mid-Atlantic coast. I’m incredibly grateful to have had all of these wonderful times in such places.

Yet my travels were always about business, culture and relaxation. I was never much of an outdoorsman. In fact, until very recently I thought a carabiner was an admirer of the Caribbean. Once or twice, my wife and I did discuss a vague mutual desire to visit the Grand Canyon though it always remained an undefined event somewhere beyond the horizon of our lives.

While we were all occasionally relaxing in paradise, during college Alex was also taking road trips, driving from our home on the east coast to the western states. He would return from these excursions fired up as I had never seen him. To me, he seemed a bit like a crazed late-night TV pitchman selling Ginsu knives, with all his babbling about the canyons, mountains, and big sky.

As he approached his senior year, Alex got the notion that I should join him on an epic father-son road trip so he could show me what he had seen. My reaction was less than enthusiastic; I had been perfectly happy laying on a beach and letting the ocean lull me to sleep. Not only that, but somehow he thought I should make this trip a gift to him for graduating with a certain GPA (which he could predict within a few hundredths of a point anyway since he was in his last term). Wait a minute!, I thought. Didn’t supporting his education count as the gift?

In the years that followed, Alex would hound me often about the trip, insisting that I had somehow promised this to him. And I would continue to demur. Then, one day, I surprised myself by suddenly thinking, why not? I was entering my sixties and I realized that the window on a bonding opportunity like this could close quickly as I got older and Alex got a little further into adulthood. So, to his shock and delight, I agreed. In June 2018, we rafted though the Grand Canyon for a week and then drove through Death Valley to Yosemite for some epic hiking. The rest, as they say, is history.

Now that I’ve become that passionate believer in whom others see the maniacal pitchman, I remind Alex that all of this is his fault. In each succeeding year we’ve taken several more trips to immerse ourselves in the wonders of nature. Janet and I spent a magical two weeks in and around the Grand Canyon in a much more impactful way than we had ever imagined. I had a similar father-son bonding experience with Jeremy as we traveled through the incredible Everglades and Florida Keys. More such trips have transpired, including a family excursion through Grand Teton, Yellowstone and more immersion in the astonishing terrain of the Desert Southwest. I even became a photography enthusiast because of the limited chances to be able to capture these landscapes of unparalleled splendor. I’m happy to be sharing many of my images with you in this space.

I’m also happy to point you to many resources we have experienced directly, and can vouch for, to help you plan your own wilderness adventure. We are not about long-haul trips into the backcountry or more extreme wilderness adventures (although I love watching videos and reading about them). The main idea is that one can have great experiences on day outings at any level of challenge that desire and comfort dictate. The resulting awe and inspiration from the grandeur of nature will be the same in any case.

There are vital benefits that are sure to accompany a meaningful relationship with the wilderness. Some will accrue from the preparation one needs in order to have a safe and rewarding experience. A reasonable level of fitness is required to hike, raft, and otherwise be on the move frequently during these journeys. Also, learning occurs at many levels that tends to be quite gratifying – about wilderness gear and best practices, geology and topology, wildlife, history, government policy, and so on. Acquiring new skills, such as photography, also may come with wilderness endeavors. And, perhaps most important, is the changed perspective on life one gains by developing an appreciation and reverence for our earthly treasures.

See for yourself. Again, welcome and enjoy.

Craig