Susan Reynolds

"My professional biography is too long for this space. My first attempt at a modified bio was more like a resume - not too exciting. So I sat and looked around my studio as if the space would lend me inspiration.

I am a married mother of four grown children. I have been or still am a photographer, a greeting card artist, a ceramic artist, a race director, a distance walker, an adventurer.

Summer '07 I completed a solo-backpacking hike of nearly 200 miles in the Arctic Circle of Lapland, Sweden. It was my longest hike to date. It was lifechanging.

I am planning a walk of some 300 miles for spring '08. I will do this to promote the sport of walking for fitness and because to me such a walk is the ideal fun and adventure.

My studio is where I write. It is a space that lends itself to creativity. I recently put together a large collage. Photos from places I've walked and sayings of my own or others adorn the large cork boards adhered to my storage cupboard doors.

In lieu of a lengthy bio, I will share with you some of the sayings in my collage. Perhaps they will tell you something of me.

- ""It's better to do something than to do nothing."" me

- ""She doesn't look the sort."" a neighbor's comment to my husband upon learning of my plans for the Arctic

- ""If adventures were easy, they'd not be special."" me

- ""Rejoice for you are here."" the opening page on my GPS

- ""I'd rather go alone than not go at all."" me

- ""Laugh Freely, Walk Far"" most likely the title of my next book

- ""Bite me...everything else has."" My response to the bugs in the Arctic.

- ""If you can't stand to fight, then fight on your knees."" General Seneca, ancient Rome

- ""Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will not grow."" Ronald E. Osborn

- ""Tourism is sin, and travel on foot, virtue. It is as simple as that."" Werner Herzog

- ""Always take the bridge."" me after a cold wet encounter with a river in the Arctic

- ""Walking takes me places."" me

- ""You can choose between being a victim of destiny or an adventurer who is fighting for something important."" Paolo Coelho

- ""Hey, Mom and Dad, we're like the 300, only without the two zeoes. And we didn't die."" my youngest child, Gabe Reynolds, Feb. '07 after we won our fight against racism in the local high school"