Required Reading: Jon Bowermaster
February 18, 2012, By Jack Heffron 0 comments
Some guys live rich and exciting lives. And when they're able to write about their lives the rest of us can enjoy them too. Such is the case with Jon Bowermaster. Adventurer, environmentalist, explorer, filmmaker, author, lecturer. He's a very busy guy. He's kayaked every ocean on the planet for his Oceans 8 project. He was part of a trans-Antarctic expedition with adventurer Will Steger that became a bestselling book. He's an outspoken supporter of worldwide environmental issues.
With Bowermaster, it's always something. And it's worth checking in regularly on his Notes from Sea Level blog to find out what's next. You'll find it at jonbowermaster.com. He's a guy who's is equally comfortable hiking with celebrities as he is with impoverished villagers. He's been on adventures with outdoors experts and with the merely curious.
His writing captures the intensity of moments in extreme natural environments, and he's quite a photographer too, which adds a powerful visual element to his site. He's also produced quite a few award-winning films for National Geographic. You'll find some spectacular video clips from Antarctica, Tasmania, the Bering Sea, even Pukapuka. (Yeah, I had to look up that last one too.)
Most of us are enjoying our own adventure as dads, which can be just as fraught with challenges as the South Pole, but it's fun to get away for a while and imagine the road not taken, the road that sometimes still calls to us. Notes from Sea Level gives us a taste of that life in a fascinating way, an escape hatch to other worlds where we can learn about places and people we'd never know about. And Jon Bowermaster is a great companion for the trip—a hardy but humble guide, soft-spoken but thoroughly knowledgable, a serious man with a sly wit. Next time you need to get away but can't take the time or afford the trip, visit Bowermaster's site. It's a hell of a ride.
