Jon Turk

Jon Turk, PhD, has wandered through exotic and remote landscapes and returned to write and speak about his adventures and the people and environments he encountered. Trained as a scientist, he had worked for decades in environmental education and coauthored the first American environmental science textbook, which spearheaded the development of environmental science curricula in North America.

Shortly after, he left academia to engage in extreme expeditions in remote parts of the world—a life’s passion that has continued for 40 years. Over the decades, he has kayaked across the North Pacific and around Cape Horn, mountain biked through the Gobi desert, made first climbing ascents of big walls on Baffin Island, and made first ski descents in the Tien Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzia.

But the greatest journey Jon Turk has taken is a passage from science into the realm of phenomenon that science cannot explain. He chronicles his world-class journeys and his mental and spiritual passages in a trilogy of books: Cold Oceans, In the Wake of the Jomon, and The Raven’s Gift.

Jon Turk offers workshops as well as corporate talks and trainings. He writes and speaks frequently on the vital importance of our relationship with natural environments in this oil-soaked, Internet-crazed civilization, as well as about his outer adventures, inner spiritual explorations, and other motivational topics. Now, he focuses on storytelling as a way of raising awareness of cultural and environmental tipping points.

He also has been featured as a performance artist and storyteller with Weber Dance, a modern dance troupe which portrays his Siberian journey in Synchronicity and Sacred Space, based on his journey in the book The Raven’s Gift.