I was supposed to be a teacher. Raised a Quaker by parents who devoted their lives to education, I nearly succumbed. After graduating from a public high school northwest of Philadelphia and from Earlham College with a degree in English literature, I landed a job teaching at Wakayama University near Osaka, Japan. Two years later, I was at Harvard University in a master's program in East Asian Studies and poised for a career in academia.

Maybe it was hitchhiking home from Japan through Asia that whetted my appetite for something more adventurous than teaching. Maybe it was seeing the world anew when I headed to the Sierra Nevada with my husband for a summer that has yet to end. What's clear is that a job with the local weekly newspaper, which I accepted for a winter, quashed every intention of teaching. When I left that paper I was a journalist, freelancing stories and photographs to national magazines in a career that is as fulfilling as it is liberating.