This website illuminates my life and adventures, focusing on five areas, Adventure, Love, Art & Music, Economy and Philosophy. To these five areas, I have purposefully dedicated my life. This notion emanated from my belief that the human experience is driven by five innate momentums: physical, sexual, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. So, I desired to study, experience and understand these subjects, with the objective to understand not only the world around me, but to understand myself as well. Thus, these five areas of study match my innate momentums: adventure-physical, love-sexual , art & music-emotional, economy-intellectual, and philosophy-spiritual. This quest has led me to over 2450 of the world’s 3978 provinces, to every country on earth and to the summit of the highest peak on each continent (thank heaven for good weather!). In my travels, I learned to respect the intelligence and ingenuity of people of all races and callings both past and present. Come with me to see the world as I see it, if you will be so kind. Join me in re-examining our world and our selves, to contemplate how we can move to make our world a virtual Garden of Eden.
DISTINCTIONS: BBC 2017 Travel Pioneer • Journal Articles • Explorer’s Club Flag Expeditions • World Parks Project • Walk Across South America
Vietnam, Quang Binh Prov, Water Scape Boat -
Slovenia, Sevnica Prov, Clocktower
Turkey, Artvin Prov, Road
Vietnam, Thai Binh Prov, Night Restaurant Hostess
Slovenia, Smartno Ob Paki Prov, Tree
UK, Milton Keynes Prov, Modern Stone Circle
Slovenia, Hrpelje-Kozina Prov, Bee On Blossom
Argentina, Jujuy Province, 2010 – Jeff Shea walks across South American Altiplano –
I decided in 2010 to begin doing yearly expeditions to push myself to my maximum potential, to see what I could do and what I could not do, even though I knew that there was serious risk, especially in solo walks across desolate territories. One of the impetuses I had was my deep conviction that humankind – although few are paying attention in this regard – desperately and quickly need to set aside vast, contiguous areas of the world, each with an epicenter far from its edges. I call these World Parks. (Two years later, I incorporated World Parks, Inc., a non-profit, public benefit corporation whose purpose is to further this idea.) I could accomplish many things at once: walk in candidate areas, to really know them, photograph unusual landscapes, test my metal, learn, discover, and possibly inspire people to consider my idea of World Parks, eight vast areas to be permanently preserved for our descendants.
My first walk was across the South American Altiplano. It is a dry area bordering the world’s driest desert, the Atacama. (In 2012, I walked across the Atacama. Writer John H. Richardson accompanied me for the first nine days of that journey.) The first week of this journey, I almost ran out of water. Here, I am shown crossing the Salinas Grandes, a large, dry “salar” near Morros village in Jujuy Province in northwestern Argentina. I set the camera up on a tripod to take this self-portrait.
England, Windsor Prov, Cheese Shop
Cameroon, Witch Doctor Mosque, 1990 - When I passed this structure in a bus headed for Foumbon, I told the driver to let me off. He tried to discourage me, saying we were not near any city. I got off anyway. It turned out that this mosque was built and owned by a Muslim with four wives and twenty-eight children. I was invited to spend the night there. It was rather amazing to be in a house with twenty-eight children, four wives, the head of the house and an aide, totalling thirty-four people in all, not including me. The next day, the man showed me he was a witch doctor to boot. He showed me how he divined answers to questions through the use of a gourd and four feathers fastened to clay bases. He placed the feathers laying on the ground, then placed the gourd over them. He asked a question, beat on the gourd and then lifted it up. If the answer was No, the feathers stayed flat on the ground. If the answer was Yes, the feathers stood upright. When he asked, "Jeff est bon? (Is Jeff good?)", the feathers answered Yes. The feathers can't be wrong! I shot a video of this, which will appear in this website.