About Morgan Stafford
In his late fifties, Morgan Stafford began to think about a creative retirement after he completed a twenty-five-year career as a combatant craft designer for the Department of the Defense. A retirement that would satisfy his passion for travel.
At sixty-two, at the time of his retirement, he had created an authentic and personal plan to live from his 1200cc Triumph Explorer adventure touring motorcycle. For almost two years and approximately 60,000 miles, Morgan toured the Lower Forty-Eight, Alaska, and Canada. His plan to live such a life of freedom involved a total divestment of all of his belongings; house, furniture, guitars, bicycles, and surfboards. He got rid of all that meant so much to him but knew would restrict his transition into a life of adventure instead of what he knew would be monotonous and mundane; a cushy life in a lovely home without a job.
Achieving such independence, minimalism, and an off the grid lifestyle required such downsizing. Extensive travel and homeownership are for the affluent. Morgan chose to leave it all behind and turn his life into art---his own personal art form of long-term motorcycle travel and an autonomous life which he named his Nomadic Experiment. An experiment to see how long he would choose to live nomadically.
Before his departure, Morgan received the ashes of an old friend with a request from his wife to spread them in all the places that he was never fortunate enough to visit. The act caused Morgan to look inward at his own good fortune to pursue the opportunity he had created. The request to spread his friend's ashes caused him to take pause and examine his own mortality and the brevity of life.
Adventure motorcycling was new to Morgan, and his plans had gone from cross-country motorcycling to motorcycling Alaska, to crossing the Arctic Circle on the infamous Dalton Highway. He then continued extensive travel in the Lower Forty-Eight, Canada and rode the unpaved Trans-Labrador Highway across Labrador to reach Newfoundland and the Canadian Maritimes.
Between travels, Morgan has lived in Charlottesville, Virginia while completing a series of books about his many miles of motorcycle travel in North America. To the Arctic Circle is the first book in his My Nomadic Experiment series.
His plan now is to do extensive motorcycle travel in Europe and surrounding countries beginning in May of 2019.
