Ted Mattson was born and raised in Pennsylvania and graduated from Penn State University with a degree in Agronomy. He specialized in turf grass management and worked for a golf course that hosted several nationally televised golfing events. But his heart was always in Alaska, and he eventually quit the golf business and learned to fly a helicopter in Oregon which he eventually flew up to Prudhoe Bay. There he finally arrived in his coveted North. Mattson later drifted into commercial salmon fishing in the Bering Sea and for the next thirty-nine year spent summers as the captain of his own fishing boat. He is now retired and lives on a small farm in northeast Wisconsin with his wife Cindy.