I'm from a small fishing town in south central Alaska called Homer, and I grew up on boats fishing and playing on the beaches and mountains of that beautiful land. I've traveled extensively in New Zealand and Australia as well as Indonesia and Southeast Asia, Europe, East Africa, and now the I'm making my way through the Mediterranean! I love to write, that's currently what I spend most of my creative time doing. I like to write fiction, short stories, and occasionally I do creative nonfiction like travel writing and journalism. I live in Portland Oregon now where I was in band for a while playing bass and singing, and now I work as a news producer at a small community based radio station, and I'm a section editor for a music magazine in Portland.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I'm traveling about in Italy and Greece for the next two months and am looking for some people who are willing to host me through couch surfing. I've traveled a lot in the past ten years, mostly making use of hostels and guesthouses, or camping, but somehow I've never gone couch surfing despite many of my friends being hosts and surfers themselves. I've always felt that the best way to experience a country is with the people who live there, and staying with locals through couch surfing seems like one of the best ways to meet locals. Many of my friends have recommended couch surfing as a means to meet new people to hang out with in a given location, and that is definitely part of what I love most about traveling.

Interests

I love music, reading and writing, looking at art (though I am not really visual artist at all), and I like learning the history of places and people, trying to understand why humans are the way they are, I also like to read a lot of poetry as I think it helps give me insight into my own behavior and the way I feel about the world. I like to be active and go hiking and look at animals and birds and fish and climb mountains and swim in the sea. I'm currently learning italian. Parlo un p'o di Italiano. Ich spreche auch ein bisschen Deutsche.

• animals
• birds
• fish
• arts
• writing
• poetry
• singing
• news
• reading
• traveling
• music
• fishing
• hiking
• camping
• surfing
• swimming
• history
• journalism
• beaches
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

I like movies by Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Alejandro Inarritu Gonzalez, the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, and I like lots and lots of books: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Anton Chekhov, David Foster Wallace, Frank O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, stuff like these. I listen to a lot of music: Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, Radiohead, The Gorillaz, Kendrick Lamar, Alabama Shakes, Unknown Mortal Orchestra...

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, Venezuela

Countries I’ve Lived In

Germany, United States