A Bird Feeder's Journal A Memoir by David Cleghorn

From the Tetons Mountain Range to the Amazon Forest, David Cleghorn has embraced the world's beauty with a daring and curious spirit. With wise and experienced guides – and a healthy sense of humor – he explored what most only see in documentaries. Cleghorn takes the reader along for this trek as he looks back at some of his life's most meaningful adventures.

David Cleghorn has lived a life reminiscent of a Robert Service poem without consciously trying to do so.

He was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and spent his early childhood in Flowery Branch, Georgia, and Chattanooga, Tennessee. His happiest days were in Chattanooga before eventually moving to Villa Rica, Georgia, where he had to fend off physical attacks as a "city" boy.

His hometown of record through college was Dunwoody, Georgia, following a formative newspaper career in Chamblee, Georgia. During that time, he earned what was considered "serious" money for those days. His focus on work continued through college, at one point juggling eight sources of income.

Cleghorn served two years in the infantry to fulfill the active duty requirement of his ROTC commission as an infantry officer. He was sent to Germany at the beginning of the Berlin Wall crisis. A year later, his unit at Fort Benning, Georgia, received orders to deploy to Miami, Florida, for the Cuban Missile Crisis. The unit's bags were already on the train when the crisis was resolved.

His military duty cut short his tenure at The Atlanta Journal, but Furman Bisher kept his position open. Financially, he was still struggling. A series of letters exchanged with Bisher about his decision almost brings tears to his eyes in hindsight. He turned down a job offering $75 a week in favor of one starting at $105, believing he had finally achieved financial stability.

A product of a broken marriage, Cleghorn found that when the time came for serious relationships, many of the women he dated were divorcees who often spoke negatively about their ex-husbands. Many of his friends experienced divorces or had children who were troublemakers, which made David hesitant to take that risk himself.

In 1967, he moved to Dallas, Texas, as part of a corporate transfer to apply his advertising sales experience to complement his four years as an associate for three magazines in a family-owned trade publishing company. Despite receiving offers to return to Atlanta, he chose to remain in Dallas.

His 26-year career with the company ended when it was sold, and only a few employees were retained. At that point, he vowed never to let someone else control his future again. He decided to transition from part-time investing in the stock market into a full-time profession, determined to answer to no one. His goal was to be a full-time entrepreneur, with an office wherever he happened to be.

This independence was the reason he did not begin climbing until he was almost 44.

In 1995, Cleghorn moved back to Georgia to care for his parents. Over the next 13 years, he spent most of his time in a three-county area, an experience he considers one of the best decisions of his life. A trip to the Tetons on his 70th birthday was his personal gift to himself.

During his time in Texas, he developed a passion for country music, with Billy Joe Shaver and Guy Clark becoming his favorite singer-songwriters. He frequently woke up to a CD playing I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal before realizing it had been written by Billy Joe Shaver.

Today, Cleghorn resides in rural north Georgia.