But it wasn't during a trip to famous Four Corners archaeological sites like Chaco Canyon or Mesa Verde National Park that tripped the wire of his passion. Instead, it was in Copper Canyon in northern Mexico, home to Tarahumara Indians. Fisher was visiting the Tarahumara Indians during an annual food relief drive to help the struggling people of the region who were starving because of prolonged drought.

The Tarahumara live in the rugged Mexican state of Chihuahua, where there is no electricity or telephones. Only in the last four years has the area had a road. Their inaccessibility has made the Indians one of the less taken care of in the vast country that has many pockets of abject poverty. In fact, in 2007 Mexico's President Felipe Calderon declared the region where the Tarahumara live a National Disaster Zone. The Tarahumara have always been considered one of Mexico's biggest Indian tribes, at one point reaching some 120,000 people. But since a prolonged drought, coupled with deforestation, their food supply of corn - their staple crop - has drastically diminished and malnutrition has shaved the size of the tribe nearly in half.

Fisher, a resident of Tucson, Ariz., has been helping to find monetary and food donations consistently in the last decade or more and does food runs to the remote region of the Sierra Madres at nearly 10,000 feet. Each year - sometimes more often - he gathers the food and other supplies to deliver to the harsh topography and climes of Copper Canyon.
The food runs have helped Fisher do two things: Assist the Tarahumara in bringing attention to their plight, and learning about a possible connection between the Tarahumara and ancestral Puebloans.

During a speaking tour in the Four Corners in May, Fisher will speak to audiences about these two things. Accompanying him will be Patrocino Lopez, a Tarahumara Indian who Fisher met while driving tourists through the Sierra Madres on a newly built road between the tiny villages of LaBufa and Batopilas. Fisher gave Lopez a ride and since then, the two have worked together to improve the conditions of the Tarahumara.

Lopez is leader of the Tarahumara racing team - indigenous men who often compete in endurance races in the United States. The Tarahumara are famous for their ability to run 100 or more miles. Short in stature and reliant on running as a means of transportation, the Indians are built for endurance. Lopez is also a violinmaker, whose artisanship is unique in quality and style. Often, Lopez carves the head of the violin in the shape of birds or other animals. As part of the speaking tour with Fisher, Lopez will play his violin, as a way to show his workmanship and to illustrate the cultural evolution of his people from the time of the Spanish encroachment in the 1500s to the present day.

For his part, Fisher will discuss his own theories about the connection between the Tarahumara Indians and the mysteries of the ancestral Puebloans (a.k.a. Anasazi).
"People always ask where they came from, where they went and why did they leave," Fisher says.

Through his relationship with Lopez and other Tarahumara, Fisher says he has discovered ethnographic information that connects the two cultures. Speaking and working as an amateur writer, photographer and explorer, Fisher knows that his hypotheses about the ancestral Puebloans is new and challenges major standing theories put forth by trained archaeologists. When addressing that possible point of contention, Fisher says his information aims to add to the discourse, not detract from it.

"This is not a disrespect of what's been done before," he says.

Much of Fisher's information hinges on agricultural evidence he found in the 1990s in Copper Canyon. He looked at granaries ? how they were built, their uses and locations. Two of the most common mysteries between the Mayan and Chacoan civilizations are how they grew their crop and how they stored it.

It is these types of questions and findings that Fisher will discuss during his Four Corners speaking tour. As he says: "We have found where the Chaco Anasazi migrated to and why they left. We believe we have located the origins of the Chacoan people in North Central Mexico."