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My journey into this endeavor as well as its mission pretty much came about on their own. Well not really of course, I had to build these spidering webs, teaching myself as I went and steer them towards some sort of vision I have as a writer. But the simple truth is, it kind of snuck up on me, I didn't know what I was messing with till in way too deep to get out, even if I'd wanted to, but that's the way my whole life has been, always an immutability of circumstance at play it seems--

L. O'BRIEN OUTSIDE TAOS N.M.And for damn sure a long, crazy ride just getting from there to here. Being so anti-technology at one point of my life that for a decade and a half I used horses, dogs, and canoes as my main transportation, even choosing to not use a chainsaw for a few of those years, I still nonetheless found myself by 1991, messing with a word Processor trying to write a good brochure for my Guide business. By '92 I was using a laptop at trade shows.

Back then technology was still sufficiently cryptic to cost big bucks. To get on the net, you had to have a webmaster, funny memberships and modems, besides the ISP being pricey--domain names, I seem to remember, were $250. a year. But boy it was something to behold, wild frontier all the way, just having a page for Alaskan Hunting put you at the top of the hit list if you updated regularly for the search engines to crawl.

I didn't realize at the time, what lay all ahead, how much potential opportunity was really there in those early days.TROUBLED ALASKAN GUIDEI finally took down that original site in the mid 90's when I got in a pissin' match with the powers that be and ran out of money and hope. But it was a good thing in the long run I reckon, looking back at it now. Even though they pretty much snuffed my guiding business, and much of the love I had for it, a refocusing was happening within: the urge I'd always had to try and express myself well enough, that I could maybe make sense of what I'd been living too fast to record, had finally come alive--

I did what any sane person would do and dropped out entirely. Living a bohemian lifestyle like in my youth, I got off the net and lived the starving writer gig for a number of years to concentrate on my own study of the strange craft of fiction. Yet one must finally climb to the next level to continue their purpose of life, so in March of '05 I logged back on.

I was only planning a guide site at first, as I felt I wanted to do a few trips again, and maybe a blog or two, yet that immutable force always twisting my fate towards just words struck once again. A bugled second operation on a tore rotator, thus permanently crippling my shooting shoulder, kept me fiddling with pixels and source code instead of out in the bush doing hunts. As I delved further into the complexities of web creation, a vision started to coalesce.

GOZO WOODSMAN IN BUCKSKINS WITH A HAWKEN RIFLEWhy not I though ... the next logical progression for a writer and guide. Do something you love as much, but not as strenuous as, guiding in the bush, hopefully make a living doing it, helping yourself and others in the process, maybe even affecting the larger scheme of things in some way. As exciting to me as when I first rode out of Taos chasing freedom. And 'tis a sweet dream indeed--an electric gonzo woodsman writing, tweaking, creating what I hope will become the most useful and popular pages around, guiding my visitors to the very best of what Alaska has left to offer, whether it be things to do, places to go, or goods and services--And the funny thing is, I feel for the last three decades, and maybe longer I have been assembling the skills to maybe even pull this thing off.

Here's to Free Enterprise, bohemian lifestyles and hope for the Future, W.J. Lynus O'Brien

by W.J. Lynus O'Brien
20 April 2005

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