About
Hello and welcome,
I’m Ethan Maurice, an everyday explorer, philosopher, and mystic — turning travel, lived experience, and timeless wisdom into wider and deeper ways of life than our culture currently offers.
At sixteen years old, a near-death experience forever changed my life. Clear that a lifetime was no guarantee, I sought to live and better understand “what’s really going on here?” After pedaling a bicycle across the USA at twenty-one, I recognized that super cheap travel and reading books were a means of pursuing both and set out on what became a five-year walkabout.
In ways I could have never imagined, that journey changed me. How I spend my time, see the world, my sense of “self” — and much more — was forever altered. Writing along the way to share what I learned, I discovered a creative vein in me.
I write to “save people’s lives while they still have time to live.” A phrase my brother off-hand-offered in middle-of-nowhere Wyoming while pedaling bicycles across the USA. I was airing my doubts about attending medical school and how, to truly and actually live, we need a different kind of help decades before we dance with death in a hospital. Miraculously, a few days later, a Kiwi in the woods north of West Yellowstone did exactly this for me.
Other influences that helped “save my life while I still have time to live” include:
Anthony Kiedis’s life expressed through his book Scar Tissue
The possessionless riches of Jack Keroauc’s The Dharma Bums
Deep solitude among nature in the mountains bordering Yellowstone
Incredibly inspiring friends found through travel and WONDER WANDER
The collective wisdom of books (particularly the ones on my Bookshelf)
This is the central aim of my writing, website, and creative work.
Heading out for a sunset sand dune tea ceremony at WONDER WANDER.
Adventures I’ve lived:
Recovering from a traumatic brain infection at the age of sixteen, barely graduating high school
Pedaling a bicycle across the United States raising $96,000 for the children’s hospital that saved my life
Graduating magna cum laude from Northern Arizona University with a bachelor’s in Biomedical Science and minor in Chemistry
Living as an expat in Playa del Carmen, MX for three months
Reopening and running a huge, historic log-cabin lodge and bar just outside Yellowstone National Park for three remarkable summers
Tramping about New Zealand reading books for five months
Meditating ten hours a day for ten days straight at a Vipassana meditation retreat (highly recommended)
Rambling about North America in a Honda Element home on wheels
Getting a private pilot’s license (and halfway through instrument training) before stopping flight school during the pandemic
Building a beautiful real estate photography business with a friend
Hosting an annual “potluck of experiences” called WONDER WANDER
Playing “digital nomad” mucking about Colombia for 37 days
Living seaside in Ecuador for two Decembers and learning to surf
Surfing and learning to ride a motorcycle in rural Nicaragua
Things I’ve Created:
Websites:
Interesting Things:
17 Ideas That Changed My Life (a philosophical coffee table book)
GO. A Ridiculously Useful Guide to Cheap, Unconventional Travel