Duane is new to the writing world but not new to the world of experience. Born and raised in Minnesota overlooking the river valley, Duane graduated from Echo High School in 1960. He enlisted in the army in 1964 at the age of twenty-one and spent one of the three years in Korea as a US Army engineer. Duane is married and has three children. He started his own company in the Minnesota farming area selling and delivering concrete. Duane was a scout master, a survival expert, and is skilled at living and thriving under some of the most extreme conditions known to man. He is also a public speaker who gives presentations on rural living, homesteading, survival, Alaskan living, and interesting topics, such as the art of dowsing. Duane moved to Alaska on a whim nearly thirty years ago after surviving a shot to the head. He and his wife, Rena, of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, became the last people to have filed a claim under the Federal Homestead Act of 1862. The Homestead Act of 1862 ended for good on October 1986. Duane found his second wife through the mail-order-bride system. Rena moved to the Alaskan homestead to live in a hole in the ground, called a dugout, for nine years while she and Duane built their three-story log home. They live off the land for the most part, gardening, solar power, and trapping. Rena does the skinning. Duane has so named their heaven on earth Ose Mountain and is referred to as Ose Mountain by most.