My Story
A Life Shaped by Nature, Adventure and Following What Feels Alive
I grew up on a 30-acre farm in southern Maine, the seventh of eight children. Since then, life has taken me from a handmade cabin in the northern woods to wilderness expeditions, corporate boardrooms, sacred ceremonies, tropical islands and a life lived largely on and under the sea.
These days, in addition to traveling to other countries and oceans for several months each year, I spend my time primarily between Bimini, Florida and Hawai‘i. I mentor a small number of people, create immersive experiences in nature, and continue exploring our relationship with the ocean through Living Oceans. I’m also bringing to life Celebrating Nature, a spiritual fellowship rooted in reverence, community, service and the recognition that we belong to this outrageously ecstatic living world.
The path here has been quite an adventure. I’d never have guessed I’d be where I am now. It does make some sense in hindsight, the common thread being following what had the strongest pull.
Growing Up on the Farm
I grew up hunting, fishing, trapping, wandering through the woods and learning directly from the land. Nature was all around us, woven into daily life.
My family life also brought profound challenges. As a teenager, during family counseling following my brother’s suicide, I had a realization that changed the direction of my life: our beliefs shape far more of our experience than we realize.
That insight began a lifelong exploration of consciousness, healing and human potential. In high school, I started practicing yoga and meditation and continued for decades. I even sold enough pot to pay for a meditation course—which tells you something about both my priorities and the era.
In my early twenties, I hitchhiked cross-country from Maine to California and from Mexico to Canada. I was fascinated by how differently life looked when I stepped outside the familiar and followed my curiosity and fate.
The cabin Joe built in northern Maine
A Cabin in the Woods
In my mid-twenties, I cut fifty spruce trees and built a log cabin in the northern Maine woods. I lived there off-grid for a year, deeply immersed in nature and learning the realities of creating a life with my own hands.
It was beautiful, demanding and deeply formative.
One northern Maine winter was also enough!
The following spring, I headed south to Boston and into a very different chapter of my life.
Exploring Healing and the Inner World
Over the next decade, I developed a private healing practice using shiatsu, acupressure, reflexology, flower essences and hands-on healing. I also worked in local churches and hospitals.
As I listened to people and witnessed their healing processes, I became increasingly interested in the relationship between the body, mind, emotions and beliefs. I studied psychosynthesis, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Option Method, eventually opening a private psychotherapy practice that I maintained for eight years.
During that same period, I worked as a carpenter and created a construction company called Cooperative Designs. The company was inspired by the collaborative approach to nature practiced at the Findhorn community—cocreating with the intelligence of the land rather than simply imposing a plan upon it.
That idea has stayed with me ever since: nature is more than a setting or a resource. Nature has become my teacher, my ally, my best friend and co-creator.
Wilderness Guide
Alongside my healing work, I became a wilderness guide for several Outward Bound schools. I led sailing, hiking, canoeing, camping and backpacking expeditions for individuals, families and organizations.
I loved watching people discover that they were far more capable than they had imagined. Someone who arrived believing they were “not an outdoors person” would soon be leading us down the trail, paddling a canoe, sleeping beneath the stars or contributing to a team in an entirely new way.
The wilderness makes things visible. It reveals how people communicate, how they respond to uncertainty and the unknown, and how naturally cooperation emerges when everyone shares a real adventure.
From the Wilderness to the Boardroom
In 1990, I created the Quantum Leadership Project and began offering experiential leadership, communication and team-building programs. My work brought me into universities and organizations including Harvard, Cornell, MIT, GE, AT&T, State Street and more.
Rather than keeping leadership development inside conference rooms, I took people climbing, rafting, sailing and exploring the natural world. Some I even took swimming with wild dolphins and sharks! I worked with executive teams from major companies and coached senior leaders from many different backgrounds and industries.
Those years taught me that the essential questions remain remarkably similar whether someone is leading a large corporation or sitting beside a campfire:
Am I making this idea up—or is it coming from a deeper guidance?
Should I say what I’m really thinking?
Will others think this idea is crazy—or might they see what I see?
Can I trust what is pulling me, even when I can’t fully explain it?
How do I bring more of who I love being into my life and work?
The Encounter That Changed My Course
In 1995, while in Hawai‘i, I swam in the ocean with a pod of wild dolphins.
The encounter was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, and I stepped out of the water profoundly changed.
That encounter opened a relationship with the sea that would guide the next three decades of my life. I began bringing families, individuals and groups into the ocean in Hawai‘i, Bimini and other parts of the world. I was called the Dolphin Whisperer because of the scope and my passion for this work.
I’ve spent ten plus winters on the Big Island of Hawai‘i, another fifteen on Maui, and much of each summer in Bimini. The ocean has become the source of my solace, inspiration and sanctuary, and in some crazy way my home.
My relationship with dolphins and whales has gradually become quieter and deeper. Today, through Living Oceans, I’m interested in meeting dolphins, whales and other marine life as fellow beings—observing, listening, documenting and allowing relationships to develop through presence, respect and mutual joy.
Bridging Land and Sea
In 2008, I was invited to a sacred gathering with a group of Ojibwe elders on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. During a ceremony, I was given the name Nimbeesh—also known as Merman—recognizing my role in bringing together the tribes of the land and the tribes of the sea.
The name touched something I already felt deeply. My life seemed to be forming a bridge: between wilderness and human community, intuition and practical action, land and ocean, and our human lives and the greater living world around us.
Sacred Water
Inspired by the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto and my own experiences with the ocean, I began leading water celebrations at spiritual and community gatherings.
Over the years, I have collected—and people have given me—water from sacred springs, rivers, oceans and ceremonial sites around the world. I carry these waters together and bring them into gatherings where people add their love, prayers and blessings.
A few drops travel onward to the next ceremony, carrying something of every place and every gathering that came before. What began as a collection of sacred waters has become a living lineage of human intention and relationship with water.
What Calls Me Now
Looking back, I can see one current running through the many chapters of my life: a desire to experience life directly and to help create the conditions in which people remember their own vitality, wisdom and belonging.
Today, that current flows through three primary expressions:
Living Oceans
Living Oceans grows from my relationship with the sea and my desire to deepen the connection between people, cetaceans and the living ocean.
Celebrating Nature
Celebrating Nature is a spiritual fellowship devoted to our relationship with the natural world through gatherings, adventures, appreciation and service.
Individuals & Small Groups
My work with individuals and small groups brings together decades of experience in healing, mentoring, wilderness, leadership and following the deeper movement of one’s own life.
Which of these three invitations calls to you the loudest?
Stay in the Current
The adventure continues.
If you’re excited to be part of it, I invite you to fill in the fields below and join me for occasional stories, reflections and invitations from the ocean, the natural world and the surprises yet to emerge.
Occasional notes from Joe. Shared with care.
Interested in a more in-depth experience, gathering or personal mentoring?
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