About

More about me at my eponymous website: annelewis.net. A little about the blog is below.

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Earth Explorations, according to the tag line on this blog, is my ongoing, real time journal of what I am exploring.

I am not a paid, professional explorer. Just like you are a writer if you write regardless if you publish or you're a runner if you run regardless if you win races, when you explore, you are an explorer regardless of whether you are "successful" (whatever that means). I believe anyone can be an explorer. I talk about this in a TEDx talk. Frankly, I think not only can anyone be an explorer, everyone should be an explorer.

Being an explorer is mostly about having an approach to life that is based on curiosity about the unknown. That's the core requirement. The other things like travel to exotic places are nice but not necessary. And it's really not necessary to climb a mountain or traverse a polar region. That's being an adventurer which is different than being an explorer. They aren't mutually exclusive but they aren't the same thing, either.

I personally add an element of field research through citizen science to being an explorer but you don't have to do that. I, of course, think you should. (Update: especially now that I am a 2019 National Geographic Education Fellow supporting National Geographic's citizen science outreach.)

I am keeping this journal because I believe that one of the things explorers do is observe and document what's around them so they can tell the stories of their explorations. My usual advice is that you keep your observations private until you are ready to tell a story of some sort. But I believe that if I tell you to keep a journal then it's only fair that I show you one example of what that might look like.

I don't know yet what all the journal will be. I started keeping it, after a fashion, on Facebook where my explorer posts were mixed in with my other life doings.  I do embed those posts into this journal but with added additional commentary or links. Unlike FB, this journal will be strictly for explorer stuff.

And a little about me. I'm an educator who works at the South Dakota Discovery Center. I was a 2017 National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellow or GTF. Being a GTF didn't make me an explorer, it just clarified to me that things I was already doing both in my teaching and my personal life were explorer things.

I love the outdoors, everything from my backyard the local park to wilderness areas. I like to hike and paddle and camp. I take pictures with low end cameras to prove to the world that you can be explorer with the tools you already have on hand. (Update: I've started using a bridge camera explained here.) I would like to travel more but having time and money enough is a challenge so sometimes I opt to bring the world to me through books, movies, news, music, and food. It all counts as exploration.

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