I was then able to secure a good representation of a global effort by including the graticule of equatorial, northern, southern, western, and eastern views about mountains. I was glad to start in Austria, particularly for their long tradition of interdisciplinary work and the support for montological advocacy from now retired professors Christopher Stadel and Axel Borsdorf, and the expertise and professionalism of the Fulbright Austria staff in Vienna, who provided a welcome workshop to familiarize participants not only with the Fulbright Program, but also with the academic, scientific, and social spheres of Fulbright outreach. Of significance was the opportunity to partake in a reception at the US embassy, where I chatted not only with Ambassador Victoria Reggie Kennedy and peer grantees, but also with Anton Zeilinger, the former president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences who a few days later received the Nobel Prize in Physics! While in Innsbruck, I met with colleagues at IGF, offered an opening talk at the International Mountain Conference, where I also presented my work on the Quijos River basin in Ecuador. In addition, we explored the surrounding mountain sites and worked with my colleague Andreas Haller in preparing publications and strategizing internationalization via collaborative agreements with the potential partners and my home institution (UGA). The ÖAW also had a press release for its Newsletter based on an interview about my work in montology.

My experience in Japan brought me once again to a different cultural setting than southern Tyrol. Mt. Tsukuba provided inspiration and examples on how culture and nature are hybridized and how to place conservation values on cultural ecosystem services. The University of Tsukuba faculty of human sciences were open to interaction and exchanges. I presented a university-wide guest lecture on montology, which generated even more diverse interest in the topics of mountain research, particularly about climate change and biocultural diversity. Teaching mountain ecology was a discovery for Japanese students who loved “pizza and learning” exercises, “the American way.” Working with my colleague Masahito Yoshida allowed me to integrate Eastern scientific traditions, especially when we visited the Kii Mountain Range World Heritage Sites of Yoshino National Park and Omine-san. We developed an article in the gendered mountains and reviewed literature about the Japanese tradition of the Satoyama landscapes and other biocultural heritage topics, published in the journal Geographies.

My experience in Chile provided an opportunity to link with young scholars who are developing projects of collaborative mountain science in the Southern Andes. With their assistance I was able to visit field sites in the Atacama Desert, in the coastal palm forests, in the Araucanía as well as in the Valdivian jungle. Based at the Austral University, I offered guest talks and interacted with students who showed me the beautiful landscape of the Calle Calle river watershed, all the way to the Pacific coast. Working with my colleague Tomás Ibarra, I interacted with graduate students at the Pontific Catholic University of Chile in Villarrica, where we used the “smoking” volcano Rukapillán as the target of montology reviews. Applying the Oxford Don methodology, I maintained group meetings that helped innovative teaching be successful. Also, working with my colleague Carla Marchánt at the Austral University in Valdivia, we were able to progress in the preparation of book chapters and a special issue co-edited with my Fulbright hosts entitled “Perspectives on Mountain Conservation.”