Wil Gesler

Wil Gesler was born in India of missionary parents and attended a mission boarding school in the hills of southern India through high school. His further education included an M.A. in Mathematics, an M.A. in English Literature, and a Ph.D. in Geography. He was a professor in the Department of Geography at Chapel Hill for twenty-one years. Perhaps his most notable academic achievement was the development of the therapeutic landscape concept, a framework for evaluating the physical, social, and symbolic environments of potential healing places, an idea that has been employed in scores of research projects.

His academic career took him to Africa on three occasions: to teach mathematics at a university in southern Africa, to conduct Ph.D. research in health Geography in West Africa, and to spend another year in West Africa as a Fulbright scholar. His experiences in post-colonial Africa led him to write Encountering Baboons and Other African Stories. After he retired, he moved with his English wife to England where he spent fourteen years living in Cumbria. While there he walked over 3000 miles and climbed over 900,000 feet in the fells (hills) of the Lake District and Yorkshire, providing the background for two books, Freedom to Roam: Fell-Walking and the Life Geographic (non-fiction) and The Burnscale Ramblers (fiction). He currently resides in a vibrant retirement community in Charlotte, North Carolina.