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Sebastian Junger  Leadership Position: Journalist, author of the best-selling
book The Perfect Storm
NOLS Graduate: 1976 Adventure Course
There is little doubt Sebastian
Junger, author of the bestseller, The Perfect Storm, has
led an adventurous life. A journalist
who has reported from Kosovo, Cypress, the American West,
the Caribbean, Afghanistan, and Bosnia, perhaps it is not
surprising that he took a NOLS Adventure course at the
age of 14 in 1976. What is clear is that his NOLS training
still
comes in handy in such places.
“Basically (NOLS) gives you a deep confidence that
you can carry with you out of the mountains,” says
Junger. “But
the cooking, fire building, navigating skills that I
learned there have absolutely popped up time after time.
I was
in Kosovo and we were able to get into a certain area
where the KLA were operating because I was able to read
a map
in
a way that none of the other journalists could."
“I'm not sure if ‘adventurous’ people go to NOLS
or if NOLS turns people into adventure lovers,” Sebastian
continues. “Probably a little of both. Contemporary
urban/suburban life is missing a lot of important things,
and I was first exposed to that at NOLS. I guess what I’m
saying is that I grew up in a suburb of Boston and NOLS was
not the first—but one of the first—experiences
where I realized there was another way of living.”
These days, Sebastian is living life on the fly. The
movie, The Perfect Storm, starring George Clooney and
Mark Wahlberg,
which was based on Sebastian’s 1997 best-selling
book was released to impressive crowds.
When he wasn’t busy receiving accolades for his work,
Sebastian was jetting off to various locales as a war correspondent.
“I do foreign assignments for magazines, one was
in Sierra Leone in early May (2000), during the aborted
coup,” he says. “I will probably continue
doing that and eventually write another book. Most of my work takes me to conflict
zones but I would like to go back to doing more American topics.”
Sebastian has also launched an organization called The
Perfect Storm Foundation that distributes grants to young
people in the Gloucester,
Mass., area,
where his book was set.
“Originally it (the foundation) targeted the children
of people in the maritime trades, but then we broadened
it,” notes Sebastian. “The grants are
relatively small, a few thousand dollars at most, but they have helped people
pay college tuition, buy a computer for college, go to boat building school—many,
many things. It is not just a scholarship fund.”
Sebastian has also recommended NOLS to several young
people, remarking that “it
marked the point at which I left childhood and everyone needs to do that.”
Sebastian also has some advice for future NOLS students: “I would tell
them it's the hardest thing they'll have ever done up until that point and
that the belief that you can't do something has almost nothing to do with whether
you really can or not.”
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