Hi:

I'm presently in Fairbanks, Alaska atop a mountain where I built my house starting in 1961. I didn't get it finished until about 1963 since I was building it myself and didn't have much money or time. It overlooks a very broad valley of the Tanana and other rivers with the mountains Mt Hayes, Hess and Deborah due south about 80+ miles, to the Southwest to the top of Mt. Denali 125+ miles away and clearly in view and to the Southeast to the Cathedral Mountains about the same distance away encompassing an area in view of about the size of Ireland.

My wife and I are "snow birds" in that we fly South to Southwest New Mexico for part of the winter near Silver City where Billy the Kid grew up. We have a house there, too and its walls are largely constructed of straw bales and the remainder of adobe. We are active on the boards and/or assisting nonprofit organizations: a Land Trust, little Libraries (one in NM and one in AK), an Athabaskan culture support organization, defense of a New Mexico river from dam construction and protection from abuse and cattle damage. I also have been working since 1997 as CEO of a higher education consultancy that has also helped several K-12 schools.

We are active and do a lot of traveling. Last year we went to Northern Italy to hike in the Dolomite Mountains and then to Milan, hiking in the Cinque Terre, to Siena, Pisa, Florence, Ravenna and Venice. The year before we bicycled from Brugge, Belgium to Amsterdam while spending the evenings on a barge traveling the along the canals. After Amsterdam we visited Dutch friends in Holland, Netherlands, went to Denmark to see where I studied silversmithing in 1963, and then on to Berlin, Germany where my wife attend a conference on the Mind and Consciousness. While there I became fascinated with the 1948-9 Berlin Airlift and added that to the presentations I have been giving to various organizations on interesting places and activities. Since 1968 I have been giving presentations on grant management and on Humor in the Workplace as well.The previous year we bicycled from Prague in the Czech Republic to Linz on the Danube River to Vienna, Austria, to Slovakia and on to Budapest in Hungary about 500 miles. This September we bike from Budapest to Venice through Slovenia and Croatia and Eastern Italy.

There is a lot more to my life and I've started to write some of the stories of the many unusual and some not so unusual things I've done or experienced over the past years: e.g.Ice scientist on the first commercial transits both ways of the Northwest Passage, been to Amundsen Scott South Pole station twice, Have a glacier in Antarctica named for me, hiked the Milford Track in South Island, New Zealand, flew a hot air balloon in Barrow, Alaska on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, and been the flight safety/ballistic meteorologist officer for a research rocket range. There is more, but we are having a fine time and trying to do good so that's enough.

Merritt Helfferich