Letters to a mentor.

Greetings Jeff, I realise the likelihood of you actually ever reading this is small. My name is Tyler and I'm 20 years old, I've been travelling around the world for nearly 4 years. I've never been to university; I guess I'd rather experience the world and its secrets firsthand then from a professor or a book. My travels have taken me to many places, lost with incredible strangers and found amongst the firmest of friends. Living in the moment is a beautiful way to experience a full day, but is there a future in what I'm doing? I don't have the answer, but I do know, right now, I'm creating a present worth remembering. I've been working as an outdoor educator in Canada teaching kids about the wild places, and how to find love for them, this work helps me fund a ticket or a meal for my wanderings.

Finding like-minded people seems easy, many people like to think about the environment or about liberating themselves from the world of the 9-5, the daily drawl, where their happiness is about as distant to them as a salmons understanding of a dam obstructing it's run to spawn upstream. Perhaps taking the time to stop and think...why? where is the sanity in a world that blocks my most ancient rites of being a part of nature, in being human?

Like-actioned people are much fewer and far between, They've made the jump; thrown caution to the wind, forgot their mind and come to their senses; perhaps rounded the corner to see that the greatest discovery isn't in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes for what you see. And sure they might have made some sacrifices along the way, a less then steady pay cheque, a bed might mean a bus stop or the mossy floor of a cave; the process of opening new eyes is why we have people like you, like Yvon Chouinard, Doug Tompkins, Rob Machado, Dave Rastovich, a homeless man in seattle named Jerry, Derrick Jensen, and countless others I've met along the way. All awakening the world with one story or action at a time, to the needs of the planet, to the beauty in places left untouched. I roam for this reason, inspired by simple acts of kindness by others.

I'll be heading to patagonia later this year with a surfboard and two hands willing to work wherever I'm needed, to help with everything I can. I hope one day to meet you, thanks for living the story that inspires me to live mine.

A wide eyed kid.

Tyler