Meeting Jayme Moye in Croatia in 2010,  was an extraordinary coincidence. 

 It was one of those experiences that makes you believe that everything does, indeed, happen for a reason.
  We were two women- both from Mentor and both travel writers - among a group of 10 on a wooden sailing ship setting sail  between Dubrovnik and Split  intending to explore a handful of islands on foot.

 She was the youngest of the bunch and more subdued than many of the others. I later learned that only the month before she had decided to end her 10-year marriage. That's probably why she chose time alone reading to the impromptu charades and other games that broke out on deck during sails between islands.

 The harvest season voyage was framed as one that would give us tastes of the countryside, from Croatian wines and traditional dishes to just harvested produce. We had a wonderful chef aboard who turned out creative food day after day. On that trip I photographed Jayme eating her first raw oyster, just harvested from the briny Adriatic. The face she made was memorable, but showed her embrace of the place.

 I recalled that oyster experience when preparing my story about Jayme  for Monday's News-Herald. During my research for that, I discovered a story she wrote about a trip to Africa when she drank the freshly drawn blood of a cow. That's something tribal people do to keep up strength and nutrition when food is scarce. Other Americans were repelled at the very thought, but not Jayme. She embraced it, in much the same way that she gulped down that oyster.

 I quickly discovered that Jayme was also the most fit among the Romanca's passengers. The ship would drop us off on one side of an island, then set sail to meet us on the island's other side after we'd hiked across it. These islands are largely dry and mountainous, so presented quite a challenge for me. But Jayme, with lungs tempered by high altitude living in Boulder, Colo. would run the trails and reach the other side hours before the rest of us. As I got to know Jayme better, my appreciation for her extraordinary spirit deepened, and the seeds for this story about her were planted.

I wondered: How does a girl from Mentor become one who pursues challenging adventures so foreign from her upbringing?

 Although I'm nearly twice her age, Jayme and I share the same passion to see and learn from the world. Maybe it's because besides Mentor roots, we both also share March as the month of our birthdays. Jayme and I have traveled to many of the same places, although she tends to choose trips to scout areas that might later serve to promote tourism while I travel generally better known tourism paths. I blame my Viking ancestry for my wanderlust, but I'm still not sure what motivates Jayme. Any guesses?

Although an Ohio flatlander by birth,  Jayme Moye has summitted peaks from Colorado to Haiti and Tanzania. 

Whether snorkeling the fissure where tectonic plates meet near Iceland or summiting Kilamanjaro in Tanzania, Jayme Moye remembers her Mentor roots. That's kept her grounded as she experiences the extreme adventure she seeks as a freelance writer of adventure travel. Not yet 40, the now Boulder-Colorado-based Jayme stays fit for challenges involving hiking, mountain-biking, skiing and paragliding with daily weight lifting and running exercises. She eats simple non-processed foods and considers the caloric requirement her workouts - whether for work or play - will require when planning her meals. She's faced danger many times in trips that have taken her to Rwanda, Palestine, and Haiti in recent years. Creepy-crawlies unheard of in Ohio have included flesh-eating ants that crawled up her legs in Africa and a bot fly in Peru whose eggs were carried by a mosquito that ended up biting her. Jayme became ill and needed surgical removal of the worm that hatched from that bite and was taking up residence beneath her skin.

 She can't always pack as light as she'd like since her trips often involve meeting heads of state along with camping in the bush or desert. But she carries and uses hand sanitizer wherever she goes and wears an Ankh, an ancient Egyptian symbol of eternal life, as a good luck amulet.

 Read more about Jayme's adventures in my News-Herald story set to publish on Monday. Or find it online at www.news-herald.com on Sunday night.