In Northern California he explored wilderness regions of the Coast Range and Sierra Nevadas.
[2] In the late 1970s Schelling pursued Sanskrit and Asian literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1990, he moved to the Southern Rocky Mountains, living in and around Boulder, Colorado, where he joined the faculty at Naropa University.
[3] He has published seventeen books, which include poetry, translation (from the ancient languages of India), and essays.
An ecologist, naturalist, and explorer of wilderness areas, Schelling has travelled in North America, Europe, India, and the Himalayas.
He is one of the few renowned literary translators into American English of the poetry of ancient and medieval India.