Richard Norton

I’m Richard Norton – Rick to my friends and I’m in my mid-60s – well the right hand side of the mid-60s. As the title of the blog suggests, I am definitely an out of shape outdoorsman, but nonetheless a most enthusiastic one. I grew up in a Navy family as the oldest of four. My Mom was from Cajun country in Louisiana and my Dad was a Boston Irishman who grew up in Dorchester. They met in New Orleans where Dad was a midshipman at Tulane and the rest is well, the rest. Providing both an education and sense of excitement about nature came naturally to my Mom and she passed it on, almost as if it were a birthright and an obligation. I grew up on Navy bases in and out of the United States, and everywhere we lived had something to delight both the young and then teen-age outdoorsmen. Boy scouts were a grand part of the experience. (Nope, never made Eagle, but both our sons have.) I followed my Dad via Naval ROTC at Tulane and found the privilege of a lifetime serving in the Navy for more than 20 years. Adventures were never in short supply. Later the Navy sent me to graduate school and I was lucky to discover a second career in academia, when I retired. My wife Emily is also a professor and as avid an adventurer as you will ever meet. We have two sons, each by far better outdoorsmen than I ever was or will be. The outdoors have always been part of our lives, from a tent pitched behind Emily’s family farm in Indiana to some most excellent back-packing in Utah and Colorado, to kayaking in the Everglades to diving in the Dry Tortugas