About Steve

Who am I? There is no honest way for any of us to answer that question - and I don't say that just to be clever. But you can decide for yourself "who" I am if you wish, using the following clues (and the biography further down the page).

The New Ideas Blog will give you an idea of where my thinking goes, although I don't update it often, and may not agree with what I've written there. Minds change if they are used honestly. As of March 2010, I would describe myself as a caring capitalist, spiritual atheist, and open-minded skeptic.

WebhikerLLC.com is our company website, where you can find links to all of the various courses, newsletters, and books I produce.

Steve Gillman's Quotes is a page on this site that has things I have said as well as my favorite quotes from others.

A Short Biography of Steve Gillman

I was born in 1964 in Michigan.

I spent much of my childhood reading and in being in the woods.

I quit school at sixteen to travel around the country.

I hitchhiked to Mexico at seventeen, carrying a permission slip from my parents in order to cross the border (times were different then?).

I lived alone in a cabin for long stretches between the ages of sixteen and twenty, reading and floating on pieces of ice in Lake Michigan (no joke).

I got my high school diploma at some point, and took a few college classes and then gave up on formal education to spend more time studying the things that interested me.

I worked at dozens of jobs, made money in about eighty different ways, and found myself in a home with no mortgage by my thirties (a mobile home on a small lot). I rented rooms out and lived easily on $7,000 to $17,000 annual income most years.

In February of 2001 I traveled to Ecuador, climbed to the summit of 20,600-foot Mount Chimborazo, and met the love of my life, Ana.

Ana and I were married within a year, and soon traveling the United States looking for a new place to live. In the next nine years we lived in seven different homes in four different states. With Ana as my inspiration, I started to do something with my writing. Specifically, we started building websites online.

We have done well with our online business - much better than any job I have had (we have single websites that have made more in a year than I made with any job). I write about and have websites about brainpower, the mind, backpacking, inventions, politics, travel, economics, and ideas in general, and I make money doing with my writing - I like that.

My Books