Family Story

It’s doubtful it would have occurred to anyone who knew Dan Bigley and Amber Tavavitz to set them up. Dan was the type who’d look at the highest peak in some mountain range and want to go there. Amber would see the same peak, admire it from afar, and want to barbecue. Dan, who’d acquired dreadlocks in high school and the nickname “Cedar” in college, found even the vascular system of a blade of grass worthy of investigation. Amber, a former pom-pom girl and student-body president, once had to monitor a patch of land through the seasons for an ecology class, and just didn’t get the point.

Some say it’s the bear that kept them together. Even Dan and Amber say that. Before the bear, Dan was all about the next skiing, climbing, kayaking trip. After the bear, he was all about love, family, and giving back, working to make lives better for kids who’ve been through the wringer.

Dan and Amber

Turns out, Dan and Amber were way more suited for each other than either knew at the time, the free spirits that they were in their mid-20s. Amber may not have been up for skiing down chutes or hiking to the top of Max’s Mountain at midnight. But while pursuing a major in anthropology and a minor in economic geography at the University of Minnesota, she’d gone to Kenya to live with the Maasai, a semi-nomadic herding tribe that practices polygamy, female circumcision, and traditionally offered its dead to the hyenas. While spending his middle school years in Malaysia, Dan had felt brave eating shark-fin soup. While living in Kenya in a cow-dung hut, Amber ate what the Maasai ate, and drank what the Maasai drank, which included an occasional sip of blood from the throat of a slaughtered goat.

Marriage & Kids - Alden and Acacia

Dan and Amber were married at his family’s second home in the hills above San Juan Bautista, Calif. in what Dan calls “The Secret Garden,” an area of the grounds where he’d spent many hours alone with this thoughts during healing times. Their first child was born the spring of 2007, and named Alden, an English name meaning “old friend.” Their second, Acacia, was born the summer of 2010, and named for the trees Amber lived among in Africa.