Doann Houghton-Alico has had an interesting life, which, she was once told, is a Chinese curse.
She has been and continues to be a traveler (including a trip to China in 1978 before tourist visas to look at the role of women in the Chinese economy) and a believer in and activist for social justice. In the past, she has been a circumnavigator with her husband, visiting 41 countries and sailing over 43,000 nautical miles, including a visit to the Borneo part of Indonesia, as shown in this photo, and, more recently a safari in Botswana where there is hopeful work being done on conservation, and a visit to Cape Town, without doubt one of the most physically dramatic cities , but with the ghost of man’s inhumanity to man very present; a public interest environmental lobbyist in Washington, D.C.; a freelance writer; a single parent; a town councilperson; a newspaper editor and publisher; CEO/president of a technical writing company that she started, which is still in business, although she sold it years ago; general contractor for the building of her own home in Telluride, Colorado; a contract editor and indexer of academic books; a prize-winning poet and author; a public speaker; and an activist in the early women’s movement. She lives in Chaffee County, Colorado in a home she planned for “aging in place,” far from the sea, but with views of mountains that remind her of the untrammeled places of Earth.
Her book, Voice of a Voyage, published by Sunstone Press and available in paperback and as an eBook, is based on her circumnavigation, her interest in natural and human history, and the culture of the many different societies she and her husband visited.