[7][8] He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro while in his teens,[2] and, aged 19, he spent three days lost on the slopes of Gunung Rinjani, an active volcano in Indonesia.

[9] Gooley has walked with the Dayak in Borneo,[10] and in 2009 studied and practiced natural navigation methods with the Tuareg in the Libyan Sahara.

[11] In 2012 he led a short-handed small boat voyage, from the Orkney Islands into the Arctic Circle, to test Viking methods and determine whether nature can help a navigator estimate their distance from land.

The "smile path" is a (smile-shaped) curve, formed when walkers avoid an obstacle or, during Covid, seek to preserve safe distance from other people.

[21] He is the author of books[22] which have been translated into 19 languages,[23] and have been referenced by artists including David Hockney.