Juan Pablo Quiñonez is a mestizo Latino who has been ruminating on the predicaments of modernity for over a decade. His writing aims to bridge ancestral and Indigenous perspectives, psychology, spirituality, resilience, systems thinking, science, and deep ecology, exploring where we are and our roles in facilitating what emerges.
He was born and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico. As a teenager, he completed basic training in the French Foreign Legion but left shortly after he received his parachutist badge. He studied at MRU in Canada, where he met his wife, Jennifer Ford. After graduating, they paddled into the boreal forest, where they spent six months foraging in isolation to supplement their minimal rations.
Juan Pablo has spent a hundred days in the forest foraging in the solitude of the boreal winter. In 2021, he won the ninth season of the reality TV series Alone after surviving solo for seventy-eight days in the subarctic lands of Labrador during the fall, where he underwent a multi-week water fast. In addition to being an amateur collapse researcher and a homesteader, he is also a wilderness survival expert specializing in the boreal forest and has written the survival book Thrive.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in Applied Ecotourism and Outdoor Leadership. Juan Pablo’s outdoor and survival experiences include backpacking the entire Pacific Crest Trail (2650 mi) in 99 days and paddling over 1,500 miles during numerous whitewater and flatwater trips (including the Hayes River to Hudson Bay).
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