Hi, I'm Steve.

Backpackology began in 2010, when I was twenty-two years old, fresh out of film school, brandishing a degree in screenwriting that set me up beautifully for a career in bartending.

So I bought a backpack and left.

The original Backpackology Blog terrorized the internet for a few glorious years in the early 2010s, before Instagram arrived, blogging died, and society decided that nobody needed more than one paragraph at a time.

Also, I had important bartending to do.

Backpackology is what happens when I stumble across something peculiar in an obscure book, an archaeological footnote, a dubious old legend, a disappearing tradition, or simply land on an amusingly terrible idea — and make the catastrophic mistake of wondering: What if?

Typically, this goes tits-up. It’s lured me across inhospitable landscapes, down holes I have no business entering, in pursuit of things that may never have existed in the first place, and into lengthy conversations with policemen who would very much like to know what I’m doing and why.

I would also like to know.

I don’t particularly care about collecting countries. I have no intention of showing you the ten cutest bookstores in Prague. There are perfectly nice people on the internet who will advise you where to eat brunch.

I prefer the weird stuff. The stories buried in footnotes. The traditions hanging on by a thread. The strange little corners of human existence. Rare creatures. Lost art. Strange rituals. Forgotten histories. Impossible journeys. Old mysteries. Bad maps. Increasingly worse decisions.

Sometimes I find what I’m looking for. Sometimes I don’t. But that’s never really been the point. I just enjoy doing what the little voice tells me to.