Raised in Colorado, Scott Lankford got lost en route to Stanford University and spent much of the next ten years as a maintenance man, musician, and mountaineering guide at Lake Tahoe. After joining the 1985 American Everest West Ridge Expedition, he completed a PhD in modern thought and literature with a dissertation on John Muir. Currently a professor of English at Foothill College, in California’s Silicon Valley, he has also served as Foothill’s dean of Language Arts and codirector of the Foothill College Center for a Sustainable Future.