Getting started

Julie and I headed for Kitchen Canyon in southern Utah

Getting started means I first have to leave.

I'm fairly certain that the majority of you reading this blog are likely well aware that I've recently started a job as a biologist for the NGO, Panthera. My job, as it turns out, is to realize my dream since I was a 6-7 year old child to work in Asia and save big cats. Now that's a bit of an over-simplification, but I will leave it at that and I can go into specifics another time. The point here, for my first blog post ever, is that this job means working and living in Central Asia, in places like the Qinghai Province of China. According to Google maps, that's a little over 10,000 miles back to Missoula.

I've traveled before, I've even spent considerable time on another continent (5 months in Ireland), but this job represents something quite different. My previous trips were all made with return flights in hand. I find myself now embarking along a path where my eventual address over the next several years is as uncertain to the country as it is to the street number. This means leaving behind dear friends, my family and an amazing girlfriend. However, reading that back, it doesn't sound right. Perhaps "leaving behind" is a misnomer. I am not moving forward without these people, such as did the Irish immigrants of the 19th century, never to see them again. Rather, with today's technology and the amazing applications of media across multiple means and devices, I get to be in regular contact. More than this, it is not just keeping in touch and writing blogs and posting photos; I feel a certain weightlessness that is the love of my parents, my siblings, of Julie and my closest friends, and although I am sad to not be able to see them as much, I know I will see them again. In the interim I am blessed with their support, curiosity and excitement in my new adventures.

I hope to keep in touch with photos and prose in this blog. I don't know how often I'll be able to update, nor the extent to which I'll have time to write, but my goal is to provide my own travelog to document what I'm doing and seeing for all of you who may be interested. I'm excited for the weeks, months and years to come!