About us

Sacred World Explorations is a small publishing company. We publish books about adventure travel, the environment, spirituality, food and wine, sacredness, and far flung journeys around the world. Guiding and consulting available upon request.

Our destination is, in a sense, sacred, with the belief that certain voyages out, might become voyages in. Think of it as a sort of geo-poetic quest; the glint of an outer light reflected, or of an inner light revealed. Through our memory maps, we will navigate the sacred world, creating a web of connections from everywhere to everywhere.

Peripatetic traveler, Rob ‘Tor’ Torkildson, is a lifelong seeker and explorer who has worked and lived around the world for the last 40 years. Tor has tramped through the Amazon, over the Himalaya, and across the Sahara in his quest to experience sacred landscapes in over 120 countries. He has worked as a diver, commercial fisherman, ship navigator, customs and immigration expert, dog musher, writer and publisher, a fixer in Africa, and as a vintner and owner of The Wild Hare Winery in San’t Alfio, Sicily. Tor has published three travel memoirs, a novella, and most recently, 'The Bear and the Monk'- an I-novel, and in such publications as the Wandering Series-Japan, the Kyoto Journal, Beat Scene, Ripcord Adventure Journal, Canadian Mountain Journal, the American Alpine Journal, and has won two SOLAS Awards-Gold Medal with Travelers Tales. He has been interviewed on numerous radio podcasts and in numerous magazines. Tor has degrees in Asian History, Psychology and a certificate in Communication Arts. He is an international Fellow of the Explorers Club, speaker for The Explorers Bureau, has carried the Explorers Museum Pennant on an expedition, and was a member of the Midgard Viking Expedition. Tor is working on part two of his three-part I-novel series.

Caroline ‘Siffy’ Torkildson is a geographer, cartographer, dark sky advocate for DarkSky International, life-long star gazer, author, editor, and book designer. She has worked for two science museums, an international mapping firm, for the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, served in the Peace Corps in Madagascar, as well as taught the history of women explorers, astronomy, and ESL. Siffy has published a travel guide book, a travel-memoir, and most recently ‘My Home is where my Trunk is: Traveling Toward my Dreams with Annie Peck.’ She has carried the Explorers Museum Pennant on an expedition to Peru following in the footsteps of the explorer Annie Smith Peck. She has published in Ripcord Adventure Journal, Panorama: the Journal of Intelligent Travel, the Illinois Geographical Society Journal, won a Traveler’s Tales Solas Award, and was nominated for the Pushcart award. Siffy has B.A. and M.A. degrees in geography from Humboldt State University in California, as well as a M.S. in geographic information science from St. Mary’s University of Minnesota. She is a former president of the Society of Woman Geographers, and former board member of Starry Skies North, a chapter of DarkSky International. She is working on a book about hiking the Superior Hiking Trail with her father, Mo Joe, in his nineties; and an astronomy memoir.