I’ve been a searcher and seeker all my life. That’s led me down a lot of unusual roads, from living with indigenous people, the Dene, in the Canadian north, and fighting forest fires with them, and with Algonquin in Maniwaki, Quebec, to Wall Street to artist, author and founder at Heron Dance. As Cervantes said, all roads lead to a common destination, and that is the grave, but some paths give you energy and some take it away. I’ve made a real effort to experience life in a deep way.

On the surface, there isn’t a lot of commonality in those different paths. In each case though, I spent a lot of time in nature, whether on long wilderness canoe trips or daily walks in the woods, rain or shine. And the books. I didn’t finish high school. Instead, I’ve read thousands of books and interviewed hundreds of people on subjects ranging from climbing the world’s mountains to working in refugee camps to being a Special Forces soldier in Vietnam to promising emerging cancer treatments. When a subject has fascinated me, I’ve searched out those who might have an unusual perspective on it, and asked them for an interview. It’s often been interesting.

For thirty years now I’ve been a full-time artist and writer. I write, and paint, from the perspective of a seeker fascinated by the creative process, and as someone who has experienced a lot of failure interspersed with some dramatic successes, as someone who has been attracted to the unpredictable in life, to risk, to the edges of the human enclosure where the unexpected happens. I now, in my sixties, explore the lessons learned through art and words.

What do you want them to say about you
when you're gone?
Say I never toed a line,
I went my own sweet way to the last. 
- Goethe

I left home at the age of fifteen and hitchhiked across the country in search of Indians living in the bush. I found them, but they didn’t particularly want a white teenager with long red hair and a romantic concept of who they were living with them. They were, I think, trying to get away from people like me. I ended up spending the rest of the summer with American draft dodgers and deserters — it was 1971 — in Field B.C., a tiny town in the Rockies.

I set out the next summer, and this time actually did live with Indians in the bush. I hitchhiked up to Yellowknife in what was then Canada’s Northwest Territories. There were dozens of fires burning in the subarctic forest surrounding the town. Fighting fires was one of the few jobs I could easily get — maybe the only one. After doing that for a few weeks, I was flown by helicopter to a remote fire lookout, Marion Lake Tower, and spent several weeks there alone, looking for fires. The solitude was a profound experience for a sixteen-year old.

From there, my life went through a series of adventures and misadventures — handmade leather jackets, chef in a hotel dining room, taxidermist assistant, door-to-door encyclopedia sales. The last time I worked for a salary or hourly wage was when I was seventeen. Ever since then I’ve pursued my own creative endeavors or worked for commission or worked on businesses I founded. Produce or starve. I’ve obviously not missed many meals.

The day I turned eighteen, I got a real estate salesman’s license, and within a year or two was selling hotels and nursing homes. Then real estate investor, then stock market investor, then investment manager, then founder of an investigative research firm in New York City, working for some of the most successful activist investors and corporate acquirers in America.

Missing life in the woods, I moved to the Adirondacks in northern New York State. After, somewhat surprisingly, surviving a terminal cancer diagnosis (stage 4a Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma) I founded Heron Dance, ran it for twenty or so years. It grew rapidly to over a million dollars in annual sales: new employees, new phone systems, new software, new suppliers, new subscribers. I couldn’t both manage it and do the art and writing. I asked everyone on the Heron Dance staff to find other work, tried to downscale Heron Dance and produce it alone. Eventually, I burned out and gave up.

Failure is a part of the journey, just as is embracing risk. If we’re not bouncing up against our limitations from time to time, we’re not trying hard enough, we’re staying in our comfort zone. My comfort zone makes me uncomfortable.

With the advent of platforms like Substack, it is now possible to work alone without publishers and agents. An artist without gallery representation, an author without a publisher or agent can now make a living. These are important changes for creative outsiders who don’t work well with galleries and publishers.

I now work alone, sharing what I’ve learned, and learning from others who have traveled their own unique paths in pursuit of an independent vision.