|
We are mainly the widely
scattered hosts who have developed the proposals you can see by visiting our
"destinations" link. Without these hosts and their proposals, this site is
nothing. Each EarthFoot host has his or her own biography page, which you can visit by
clicking on the host's name wherever it appears as a link. Of course, someone also had to initially develop the EarthFoot idea, and physically put the site together, so now let's talk about them. In a manner possible only in cyberspace, this site has its beginnings with two middle-aged fellows leading very different lives in very different parts of the world. One is Jim Conrad, a professional naturalist and writer. Jim's most popular books are MEXICO: A Hiker's Guide to Mexican Natural History and The Maya Road. Jim has also published over 200 magazine articles, mostly on the topic of natural history. He has served as naturalist on numerous ecotours in Mexico and Guatemala, as a plant collector for scientific study in many tropical countries in the Americas and Africa, and he has worked at a "jungle resort" in Belize. Now in his fifties, he operates from his home base deep in a forest in southwestern Mississippi, not far from the Mississippi River, in the United States. The other person is George Meijer. George is a successful businessman in his forties, a native Dutchman living in Copenhagen, Denmark. George specializes in telecommunications, from rural wireless to satellite networks, including the Internet. He has lived in Indonesia (Java and Sumatra) as well as Malaysia (Sabah), and has spent a great deal of his professional life doing business in Southeast Asia. Jim and George have known each other since 1968 and claim that they fully enjoy what life is all about. The partnership has worked pretty well, since Jim has a compulsion to write and teach, which this site has needed a great deal of, but he is useless with regard to finances and all aspects of business realities. George, on the other hand, knows these latter matters very well, and he also knows how to direct, with a light hand, otherwise wandering creativity. As unconventional as the relationship between Jim and George, is EarthFoot itself. By no means is EarthFoot a corporation, an organization, or even a department with a regular office. EarthFoot is a virtual presence, more an evolving idea about how to travel than a real place, more of a manner of thinking about what it means to be a mobile human on the face of the earth, than a business venture. As such, the EarthFoot concept stays open to ideas, suggestions, criticism, material, financial help... from you who wander into our presence. By the way, you might be interested in where the EarthFoot concept came from, and what our vision is. |