It’s not easy being Geoff Green. Founder and director of the award-winning Ottawa-based organization, Students on Ice (www.studentsonice.com), the 38-year-old Green has led 24 Arctic and 63 Antarctic expeditions. He’s braved the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, made multiple trips through the North West Passage, traveled on horseback in Patagonia, breathed rare air on the shores of Pitcairn Island and sweated out the humid rainforests of Madagascar.

“My mom says I was dropped on my head one too many times,” Green says laughing. Open and friendly as a Labrador retriever, his affability is mellow counterpoint to the vitality and high spirits that earned him the distinction of being the first person to water ski at both Poles.

An accidental adventurer, Green was raised in a village in eastern Ontario, a country boy with sports on the brain whose generous-minded parents encouraged him to find his own way, giving him lots of freedom as a teenager. He rode motorbikes and snowmobiles, went fishing, camping, sailing and hiking. He was his own best, unexplored territory – restless, adventurous, an ambitious and optimistic spirit at play, with a love of nature and the outdoors. He was 20 years old, teaching skiing in Europe, broke, waiting for money from home when he had his first watershed moment.

“I went to the harbor and started asking for jobs as a crew member of some yachts. About the third yacht I approached was this big 100-foot beautiful thing. I went on board and they gave me the number of the owner in England. I went across to the nearest payphone and gave him a call. After a crazy 10-minute conversation, where I may have told a few white lies, he hired me as the captain! I stayed for two years. This experience definitely sent me off on the unconventional career path.”

He eventually wound up leading expeditions and adventures to the world’s most exotic and remote locales for prestigious organizations including the Discovery Channel, World Wildlife Fund, National Audubon and the Smithsonian Institution.

“I’d been leading all these expeditions for adult organizations, taking them to the Arctic and Antarctic. I was seeing how profound the impact was on everyone — the Antarctic in particular — and these were people who in many cases had been everywhere and done everything. Something about these places was changing their perspective and giving them a transformative experience. I thought, imagine if I could give that experience to youth in the beginning of their lives — how it would re-define their lives and change their perspectives in their formative years when they still have a lifetime ahead of them to use that experience.”

The resulting Students on Ice is in its fifth year of operation and takes students, teachers and scientists from around the world on polar expeditions designed to advance knowledge and respect for the planet’s interconnected global ecosystem as well as fuel creative ways to preserve and conserve it.

“One of the big things I’m trying to do is help youth use its voice, because the voice of youth is so powerful when it’s positioned properly and these expeditions have proven to be wonderful platforms for that voice to be heard. The young are the future of the planet but they’re also the present,” says Green, who considers himself an “exploring educator.”

He’s adamant in his belief that in its contemporary context, exploration can and should lead to education, understanding and ultimately conservation.

“While ‘explorer’ sounds nice, most of the places I get to go to, although remote, have already been discovered. I do believe that there is still much more to ‘explore’ in our world, with regard to understanding our planet and protecting it. But I really don’t like the trendy title of ‘explorer’ and how it’s abused for marketing purposes. Shackleton, Scott, Amundsen – now they were true, good, old-fashioned explorers. However, the early aboriginal peoples around our planet were the ones that really pushed the limits of exploration, almost beyond what we can comprehend today.”

A fan of Sir Ernest Shackleton, Green has retraced aspects of the Endurance journey six times. In 1998 he led an expedition that included descendants of the original crew.

“Just reading the story ‘Endurance’ was enough to hook me. It’s such an incredible story of survival, determination, courage, leadership, teamwork and bravery, a tribute to the human spirit. Having the opportunity to literally travel in Shackleton’s footsteps in Antarctica, on Elephant Island and on South Georgia only entrenched the admiration I had for him and his exploits. As an expedition leader, you can’t help but learn from some of Shackleton’s leadership qualities, especially his deep care and concern for his men, and his never-failing optimism.”

Whenever he’s in South Georgia, Green makes his own private pilgrimage to Shackleton’s grave.

“One Christmas day I noticed a bottle leaning against the headstone. Upon closer inspection, I discovered a half-full bottle of Johnny Walker scotch. Being the good Irishman that he is I figured I better have a sip our two, after which I poured some on his grave. We had a little chat, I wished him a Merry Christmas, and that was and is one of my favorite Shackleton moments…”

Knowing your limitations is a critical to safely navigating some of the world’s most isolated and challenging geographical outposts. Fear is not something Green feels with any sort of heart-pounding regularity. Although he’s been in potentially dangerous circumstances he’s remarkably at ease in the natural world.

He’s experienced enough to know that the difference between a great adventure and a disaster is a fine line he walks every time he heads out into the wider world.

“I go in with awe, wonder and respecting the power of Mother Nature, because if you don’t, especially in places like the Polar Regions then you’ll be in trouble. Knowing when to say yes we can do this or no this is beyond the safety limit – I definitely have a good sense of what that limit is. I have a personal limit and a limit that applies to other people — I’ll go further myself than I’ll take others…” he laughs. “The older I get the more that line is defined.”

A fellow of The Explorer’s Club, when Green’s not leading expeditions, he’s planning expeditions or writing about them or talking about them to rapt international audiences.

His most recent endeavor involves a 165-ft expedition sailboat called Sedna, designed as an “ambassador for the world's oceans,” a floating focus for education, science and film. In 2002, Green sailed Sedna through the Northwest Passage, filming a five -hour TV series about climate change, which won the 2004 Earthwatch Award.

He admits he probably isn’t the most relaxed guy in the world — his leisure time, what there is of it, is taken up with kayaking, running, cutting wood. When pressed he’ll confess he likes to cut the grass, but Sunday afternoons spent weed whacking aren’t exactly the stuff of dreams and Green is nothing else if he’s not a dreamer — with a gift for making his heart’s desire come true.

He was with a group in the Antarctic when they came across a pod of killer whales that began hunting seals on ice floes. The whales disappeared and out of nowhere a giant wave came up from the ocean and flipped the seals off the ice into the ocean. The whales were making their own waves.

“They made about five or six waves and they caught three seals, but then the whales left and all three seals jumped back up onto the ice totally unharmed. The whales were teaching their young how to hunt. It was sustainable fishing by whales. And then one of the little Orca calves got bored, swam around and put its nose on the back of our Zodiac and looked up at everybody in the boat. It gives me goose bumps remembering. To look into the eyes of a whale – what a direct connection that was. It changed everybody’s life in the boat that day.”

Listening to him talk you know in short order there’s no Lazy Boy looming in Geoff Green’s future. He’s too busy making waves.