Jeff Nagel

My connection to wild places began in the woods behind my parents’ home, where as a child I spent long days wandering among the trees, drawn to the quiet and the freedom of being outside. That early pull toward nature carried me to the ocean, where I grew up sailing through long summer days and later worked at sea through my school years. The mountains called as well, skiing and mountaineering eventually led me to Colorado, where I spent much of my life, and today I live in the mountains of Sweden, still guided by that same need to be close to the natural world.

Living in different places has shaped how I see wilderness. Becoming an immigrant changed my perspective, showing me that landscapes are not only defined by geography, but by the cultures and histories that live within them. Learning how different people understand and relate to the land has been one of the most meaningful parts of my journey.

The Arctic found me in Svalbard. There is something about the starkness, the silence, the scale, and the raw beauty that settles deeply within you. I remember clearly my first encounter with a polar bear in the wild, a powerful and visceral moment on the sea ice that was both mesmerizing and humbling. It was not just a sighting, but an experience that shifted how I understood the Arctic and my place within it.

I have long been drawn to the stories of those who came before. In Svalbard, a land without an Indigenous past, I often think of the early explorers stepping into an uncertain and unforgiving world. In Greenland, that perspective expands to include the deep knowledge and enduring connection of the Inuit, whose relationship with the land stretches back thousands of years. Imagining these places before modern conveniences, raw, unknown, and untamed, still thrills me. The journals, histories, and oral traditions of those who traveled here before continue to shape how I see the Arctic and how I share it with others.

Guiding, for me, is a way of sharing that story. It is about moving through wild places together, observing, learning, and experiencing the landscape as it reveals itself. This life asks for balance, between home and horizon, certainty and exploration, sacrifice and reward. Rooted at home yet drawn north again and again, it is that balance, and the deep pull of the Arctic, that continues to guide me.