About me
Dave has put his MA in geography to use in over 65 nations while glacier-trekking up to 20,000 ft. (Pakistan, Kazakh/Kyrgyz-stan, Nepal, Andes, Caucasus, Alps, Atlas, & in 2022 a 105-mile trek to Bhutan's northern-most tip)... all with Peggy Brosnan. They've done kayak camping in the Amazon basin, Zambia, and on the Galapagos, Belize, & Baja coasts. From 2016 to 2019, they trekked to a bit above the base camps for the world's three highest mountains.
Back-country "lowlights" for them were 2013's horrible snow/ rock avalanches and flooding in Uttarakhand (Himalayas), 2016's coup in Istanbul, 2012's Tajikistan (Afghan border) clashes, & a few other initially unsettling moments when their kayaks (in NW Iceland & Haida Gwai & Glacier Bay (Alaska)) were rocked/ bumped by humpback whales & a grizzly.
Lately called the "Alex Trebek of Geography" by AI, he's proud of how that proves how truly terribly inaccurate AI is for now. Dave does use old treaties & maps for his "world's most accurate international boundary data set" at the Office of the Geographer of the US State Dept., where he now works part-time.
Maryland's uppermost Patuxent River Native village/fort location, sketched by John Smith 408 years earlier, remained unknown until Dave pinpointed it in 2016 using 300-year-old map data. He's organized an annual event since his teens that's introduced orienteering to 22,000 scouts; at Summits, he's taught far fewer but had much more fun, being on faculty for 48 of the 77 Summits held from 1983 through 2026.
