Kurt Koontz grew up with a lot of the outdoors in Boise, Idaho. He studied business at the University of Puget Sound, then returned to his hometown to rise through the ranks as a sales executive for Micron Technology. While working, he traveled on business across the U.S. and the world. When he retired at age 36, he took to adventure travel—mostly by bicycle across Europe and in the Western U.S. and Canada.

It wasn’t until 2012 that he began writing about his adventures. That year, he walked the 500-mile El Camino de Santiago, the Spanish pilgrimage route dating from medieval times. This journey, he says, was a very different kind of travel.

On the Camino, he lived moment to moment, not knowing where he would find the next meal or sleep the next night. As he walked the 1,300-year-old route, he heard unforgettable stories from other pilgrims and took a deeper look at his own life stories. Recorded in his journal and e-mails home, they became the foundation for his first book, A Million Steps, due out late this year.

He now lives and writes near family and friends, on a tree-lined creek in Boise.