You’ ve likely heard the saying,“ You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’ t take the country out of the boy.”
OUTDOOR LIVING
On the Go in the Galápagos
Galápagos brown pelican
Duane Radford Article and Photos
You’ ve likely heard the saying,“ You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’ t take the country out of the boy.”
I grew up in Bellevue, a coal mining town in the Crowsnest Pass in southwestern Alberta, when the surrounding area was still largely a roadless wilderness. It was an outdoor paradise that kindled my desire to become a biologist.
Back then, when I read articles in outdoor magazines about government biologists who were paid to study fish and wildlife populations, it blew my mind; my aspiration focused on a career in the outdoors. I would eventually pursue my ambitions, obtaining a master of science in biology from the University of Calgary— the first student ever to obtain an MSc in Biology at this university.
One of my father’ s favourite expressions was“ life is survival of the fittest,” tied to Darwin’ s theory of evolution. This expression stuck with me, as did a dream to travel to the Galápagos Islands where Darwin’ s theory originated.
Just imagine how exhilarated I felt when my late wife Adrienne( also a biologist and science teacher) and I finally travelled to the Galápagos Islands, approximately one thousand kilometres off the coast of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean. The sheer isolation of these islands has permitted life forms to evolve into species found only in the Galápagos, seemingly unafraid of man.
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