The Art Thief chronicles one of the most outrageous crime sprees in history: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Stéphane Breitwieser stole from more than 200 museums and galleries across Europe, amassing a collection worth an estimated $2 billion.

This book spent five weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. One morning in 2013, I read about a man who had fled the world at age 20, lived alone in a tent in central Maine, and apparently spent 10,000 consecutive days completely silent.

While on the run, Christian Longo had taken on a new identity, which is not a surprising action for a Most Wanted fugitive. Except that the identity he took on was mine. He told many of the people he met that his name was Michael Finkel, and that he was a writer for the New York Times.

For ten years -- the entirety of my 20s -- I spent much of my time roaming the world with a pair of skis, using the sport as a point of connectivity to explore many of the planet’s mountain cultures. Alpine Circus is a collection of 17 of these adventures.