In 1970, Tom (Harp) Harpole and his cousin Jerry put together a horse logging show in western Oregon through most of the 70's, while he studied for a Forestry Engineering MA at OSU. He got banged up falling timber in western Montana in the early 80's and he and his wife Lisa took the Work Comp settlement and headed to Ireland with their wee ones, Flannery and Derry. Harp studied Latin, Greek, and English writing and was selected to be the first American to participate in the Irish National Writer's Workshop. Two years later, back home, he began writing for a living at the age of 40 and did well, working for glossies such as National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian Air & Space, plus more. Magazine assignments took him to six continents over a twenty-three-year career. He also spent several hundred days, two weeks at a time, teaching writing workshops in 80+ bush schools all over Alaska.
Certain magazines that assigned Harp feature articles knew early on that he would try anything that involved physical/emotional risks. He regarded himself as a Survivor's Euphoria aficionado. His willingness and perspective on dalliances with danger range from an N.F.L. record, to horse logging, to skydiving with Russian cosmonauts, to getting a black bear stoned, to his compassion as a volunteer EMT in rural Montana, to protesting Gorbachev in 1990, to driving ice roads above the Arctic circle, and more.
