Daniel Leen

Daniel Leen was born in Seattle and has lived and worked on the west coast of the USA for most of his life. After studying Anthropology at Beloit College (WI), he hitchhiked to Alaska in 1969 and built a log cabin, and then spent a few years in central Alaska to experience wilderness living. In 1972 he moved to the British Columbia coast where he built a 32' trimaran, living aboard it while exploring the west coast for the next dozen years. He has worked at a number of archaeological excavation projects on the west coast and has also conducted inventories of prehistoric rock art (petroglyphs and pictographs) in remote areas of the BC coast, Hells Canyon, and the Harney Basin in eastern Oregon. He also spent four seasons manning fire lookout towers in the Pacific Northwest, including Jack Kerouac's Desolation Peak, as described in The Dharma Bums. Since the mid 1980s he has been based in Seattle, working part time at Pike Place Market while pursuing his interests in the American hobo, Northwest Coast art and culture, and prehistoric rock art. His previous books include The Freighthopper's Manual for North America, a descriptive analysis of how hobos travel and work during the period following the second World War. He has also published articles in Co-Evolution Quarterly, Seriatim, and monographs on prehistoric rock art in archaeological journals. His latest book, Ramblin' Boy covers the period from 1962 to 1972, and is partly a coming of age story of three close friends who spent those years trying to find their place in the world during a time of great change in America.