Jim Mahoney considers himself to be quite blessed, having spent the last twenty five years of his life in intimate contact with the natural world. In his capacity as wildland firefighter, wilderness ranger, trail crew leader and recreation planner (great job title), he has had no choice but to duck lightning bolts, play tag with heat stroke, tempt large felines as lunch, move VW-size boulders, and restore miles of vehicle routes in the backcountry to single-track trail. He currently pilots a leaky desk through the raging rapids of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, on the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area. Mahoney lives with his dear companion, and sundry fairly domestic critters in old Bisbee. But tonight he will do his best to bring you mystery from the campfire and a wild world that exists beyond the narrows.

Leslee Morrison has recently returned to Tucson. She has formal training in psychology, writing and energy healing and is a former community college instructor. She is starting a business called Spirit Quest, ( www.spiritquests.net ) offering a combination of intuitive counseling, energy healing and wild journeys. She works with people to overcome their blocks and reach their dreams. She wants to take people out in the wilderness in New Mexico (where she lived for a few years) to help them overcome their fears and reconnect with nature, especially women. She also wants to take people to Baja Mexico to a magical place where you can actually touch the gray whales and look them in the eye. Storytelling was her personal assignment to help her move forward in getting up and talking to people, and as a writer, she feels she has some important stories that want to be told.

Gwen Ray, a native of Lubbock, Texas, has been a puppeteer and storyteller in Tucson for more than 20 years. A performance artist who teaches in elementary schools and performs in a variety of venues, she enjoys incorporating an environmental twist into traditional stories as well as personal stories. “My stories are often based on my childhood experiences growing up on the plains of West Texas,” said Ray, who also teaches workshops for adults and children. For more than 15 years, she has shared her love of puppetry with children enrolled in the Tucson Museum of Art School summer program. Her background includes professional training at the Puppet Centre and Norwich Puppet Theatre in England, L'Institut de la Marionnette in France, and Bread and Puppet Theatre in Vermont. She has been a solo performer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland and has produced and directed children's television programming. She lives on the Santa Cruz, and in her spare time, she enjoys renovating old properties and raising tomatoes.

Nick Pintozzi is the author of two books published in 2004 that feature a dog named Bentley and the many Tucsonans in his life. Nick is a longtime newspaperman who has held a variety of professional positions at numerous publications around the country. Since 1987, he has been a copy editor at the Arizona Daily Star. He has bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism. He and his wife, Connie, live in Tucson with the real-life Bentley and two other Chihuahuas. The website for the Bentley Books Series is: www.bentleythedog.com

Sarah Mulholland is a native Arizonan. In spite of living close to her birth place, she is an enthusiastic traveler and estimates that she has visited around 30 different countries in pursuit of adventure and the butchery of foreign languages. Her other passions include her dogs, classical guitar, outdoor sports, and Breyers vanilla ice cream. Sarah is a member of Toastmasters International.

Karyn Zoldan has an addiction to unconditional love. There's nothing as heart-warming as coming home to two happy bouncing greyhounds, www.azgreyhoundrescue.org Karyn says she's aspiring to become more non-judgmental and free-spirited like her hounds; although she still probably won't lift her leg in public. In order to feed high-grade kibble to her two ex-canine-athletes, Karyn has been writing web content through her business, www.BridgeMarketing.com , since 1998. Her well-ranked website has attracted clients on three continents and she mostly communicates via e-mail -- it beats boring face-to-face business meetings. She's written web content for lawyers, sex toys, organic cookies, diets, long-term care insurance, life coaching, dating, and a myriad of other topics. Karyn also writes locally for Tucson Newspapers and the “Noshing Around” column for Tucson Weekly. To blow off steam, she writes a blog, In Lieu of Going Postal: Rants, Raves, and Reviews. One of her 2005 goals is the make money while she sleeps.

ODYSSEY STORYTELLING PHOTOS and BIOS