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This was one of the places people told me to go, it was one the big trips that you should see: Alaska.

I left home when I was 16 because I was looking for adventure.

Over the years, I found myself traveling parts of the Lewis and Clark Trail, putting my hands in the river where they set out from St. Louis, viewing the Great Falls of Montana, standing by the same Pacific Ocean they saw with such joy.

I was a college dropout, hitchhiking across the Midwest. That was part of the old, adventurous spirit.

My father being an outdoors person, he used to take us on quite a few adventures thorugh the wild areas down there, introducing us to alligators and rattlesnakes and all the trees and plants.

I had really wanted adventure. At the time that I ran away, lots of kids ran away from home. It was something of a social phenomenon.

I've always been interested in space and the idea of exploration in that area since I was a child growing up through the '60s.

I used to take my car and go down to the South Island for five or six days and climb glaciers and jump out of planes and jump off bridges and go white water rafting - a bit of thrill-seeking.

When I was 23, I went to Alaska by myself into the glaciers of the coast range and climbed a mountain by myself. It was incredibly reckless, incredibly stupid. But I was lucky. And I survived, and I came back to tell my story.

I've always walked and climbed; spent a lot of time in the arctic and places.