As that job entailed being transferred to different posts across the state, the family lived in a wide variety of communities, which provided him an opportunity to be immersed in nature as he grew up starting at an early age.

In a 2015 interview, he gave a characteristically tongue-in-cheek account of his early life, explaining that he came to Alaska "because of all the restraining orders", and that on the eve of entering the Alaska State Trooper Academy to follow in his father's footsteps, he decided against it because "I knew that I was too goofy to carry a gun".

Created in 1991, Tundra is published on a daily basis, always in one of two formats: either a single-panel gag comic or a three-panel strip with regular characters and more complex humor.

Unlike those strips, Tundra tends to deal with wildlife and the outdoors; its humor appeals to all demographics, young & old.

It now appears in newspapers in the United States, Canada, Jamaica, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Trinidad and Tobago.