Travel Writer of the Year

Good news: I've been named 2016 Travel Writer of the Year by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation. Which is pretty cool. Actually, they call it Travel Journalist of the Year, but even though I sometimes do journalist-y things, I like to imagine I'm more writer than reporter. Humor me, okay?

The judges, professors from the esteemed Missouri School of Journalism, said this about my work: "His stories are expertly crafted to capture the tension and the scenes. His readers ride with him. His stories are narratives with character, tension and resolution."

Thanks guys. I work hard on my stories to do just that. And publishers take note — readers want stories with personality and verve. They want to hear the writer's voice. They want to be transported and be in the story as they read.

Big thanks to Sierra, National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic Traveler, Adventure Cyclist, SUP, and The Clymb for giving me the platforms to tell the stories that won this award. A special shout-out to Sierra for their partnership the last few years and for the great editors I work with there, with a special nod to Reed McManus, who skillfully edited my stories on dancing with wolves in Glacier Park and climate change's affect on skiing shortly before passing away of a heart attack in early January. His untimely departure is a reminder for all of us to enjoy our lives while we're here. Let's get out there, have fun, help people whenever possible, and explore this amazing world while we're able.

Here are some of the stories that won me travel writing's highest honor.

"The Wildest Valley," Sierra magazine, Nov/Dec 2015

"Circling the Volcanoes, One Family Circumnavigates Nicaragua's Ometepe by Bike," Adventure Cyclist, May 2015

"North of the Border, A Family Explore Alberta by SUP," SUP the Mag, Summer 2015

"How to Become an Outdoor Writer and Photographer," The Clymb blog

"Worlds Most Unexpected Ski Areas," National Geographic Adventure

Lastly, you may have noticed, or maybe you didn't, ahem, that this blog has gone fallow. With the uninspiring Blogger design and fact that I'm busy with paying work, I wouldn't expect it to come alive with new posts anytime soon. If I do get inspired to write something without a paycheck (seriously, I spend enough time sweating blood at my desk as it is, and I'm also working on a book, which pays squat for the time being), it will probably be at Medium where I can make things more engaging and prettier. 

In the meantime, feel free to follow my professional page on Facebook and turn notifications on so you don't miss it when I post images like this, from my upcoming story on grizzly bears. And, yeah, my camera now has teeth marks on it.

A most unusual Christmas

This is our "Christmas tree" from last year. My wife, Jacqueline, made it Swiss Family Robinson-style from little pieces of ocean driftwood tied together with blades of grass. The gifts are packs of gum, little packages of cookies, and other things we'd bought for each other on the sly at street markets and the little, family-owned pulperias that are ubiquitous in rural Nicaragua. They're wrapped in newspaper or whatever colorful paper we could find. 

This was the commercial district in Rivas, the largest city in the region. Lots of eggs, rice, and Chinese counterfeit goods.

I remember being a little worried about Christmas beforehand. What were we going to do for presents? How would we make it special for the kids? Heck, we didn't even know where we were going to be. Eventually we settled on the beach, 'cause there aren't many places nicer than a golden swath of sand along warm ocean. Nicaragua is second only to Haiti as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, which means, among other things, that it's one of the few places left in this world where you can still find sunny beaches that aren't ruined by resorts and condos. 

But first we had to get there. 

The adventure begins: Laguna de Apoyo

“HOLY CRAP this place is crazy! Lots of guys have guns. Most houses are made of aluminum sheets. The nice houses have tall walls around them with barred windows, and razor wire, electric fence, spikes, or broken glass on top. Our hotel has an armed guard outside. Get me out of here!” 

This was my 14-year-old son Silas’ Facebook post the day we arrived in Nicaragua’s capital city of Managua. We’d been picked up at the airport by a wild-eyed scientist and proceeded to careen through chaotic city streets packed with panhandling children, oxen carts, and bicycles piled high with people (three per bike seems to be the required minimum). 

Going Big, redux: one family's from-the-hip plan to abandon their home, America, and school to hit the road in Central America.

Me in a backcountry ski cabin a day before The Realization. 

I’m not sure why I snapped. Maybe it was watching my kids get sucked into the stifling hierarchies and materialism of American youth culture. Or it was my itch to escape my increasingly insane home country and start traveling in earnest again after 14 years of raising my boys in a cocoon of domestic comfort. 

All I know is that I was sitting by a fire in a quiet mountain cabin reflecting on life and how best to live it when it hit me: I have to liberate my kids from their school desk-rows and escape this gun-crazy, smartphone-infested country for a while. 

I’ve had occasional moments of clarity like this my entire life. Every few years some scheme I’ve been contemplating suddenly crystallizes and — bing! — I realize I’ve got do it (See: One Family Goes Big). From that moment on there’s no question — it’s happening. 

The last time I had a similar epiphany I quit my job as an editor and took the family on a 6-week wilderness mountain bike ride from Glacier National Park to Banff, Alberta.

Swell on Wheels: Riding Utah's San Rafael Swell

I was pedaling alone through a deserted corner of Utah, the first stars punching through the dome of the evening sky, when I saw the lion. Or what looked like a lion. It was too shadowy and quick to say for sure, but I feathered my brake levers, which were secured to my handlebars with zip ties and duct tape, and futilely squinted into the dusk. Riding on, faster now, rock walls launched into the sky at my side, their crenelated faces blushing in the day’s last light. I wanted to look up the names of the more dramatic peaks, but I had no map. No matter, it was all achingly beautiful and my smile led the way as I continued on, pedaling hard, further and further into nowhere. 

To understand why I’m streaking down a remote dirt road through failing light into one of the more isolated deserts in America — out of water, without a map, lights, or overnight gear of any kind — you have to know the convoluted history of this star-crossed bike journey into Utah’s San Rafael Swell. 

New published work

Have had a bevy of stories published the last few months. Here's a look at a few of them. 

This feature on lookout towers in Montana ran in the July/August issue of Sierra magazine. You can read it here.

The Clymb launched a magazine-style feature section with a great layout style inspired by this piece on Pitchfork, which is the best feature format on the Web at the moment and clearly the reading experience of the future. They used it to nice effect on my story about going back to Vietnam with my veteran father for his first visit since the war that changed his life forever. You can read it here. 

The Lucky Ones

I was lucky enough to spend a week in the glorious boonies recently after nearly a month of nose-to-grindstone writing. First I took my wife and two boys into our family cabin for a couple days of off-the-grid skiing, animal tracking, and snow-fort making. 

Award season: Travel Journalist of the Year. Sort of.

It’s been a good year for writing and photography awards, which means I have some new certificates and plaques to figure out what to do with. The biggest plaque came from the Society of American Travel Writer’s Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards (three times fast!), the most prestigious in the industry. The SATW were kind enough to give me a bronze award for their 2012 Grand Award — Travel Journalist of the Year. Gray-haired people seem to appreciate this one the most, since they actually know who Lowell Thomas was (in short: the man). Though I submitted skiing, paddling, and non-sporty stories as part of my year’s work, the judges seemed to most appreciate my off-the-beaten path cycling adventures. Here’s what they had to say:

Goodbye Mom

My mother, Karen Van Auken, died recently. It was sudden and unexpected and terribly sad. My mom was a sweet, gentle person, a lover of nature who found her greatest solace in the forests of her home state of Minnesota and the mountains of Montana, my adopted home. My mom’s father was from Whitefish and his greatest material gift to our family is the cabin we all share on the border of Glacier Park. Just like me, my mom loved it there more than anywhere else. 

Mom always used to take me for walks in the woods as a kid in state parks and the old family farm back in Minnesota. They were never very exciting, we just walked quietly. I can’t say they were my favorite thing as a child, but now looking back I’m so grateful to my mother for those walks. They showed me that the natural world is often the best place, that it can heal our wounds and enrich our lives if we just go there quietly with our hearts open. 

Finding Kishenehn

November’s wan light drained from the sky as I walked alone into a forgotten corner of Glacier National Park. As night grew from the shadows, noises in the forest grew louder. My head jerked at the sound of a branch brushing my pants. A foot of fresh snow obscured the tracks of an oversized carnivore on the trail that led me into dark timber. Everywhere was blackness, the world reduced to my headlamp’s bobbing orb of light. It seemed inevitable it would suddenly be filled by some variety of toothy creature.

I checked the pepper spray canister in my pack’s side pocket. Then I remembered the propellant in pepper spray doesn't work in temperatures below freezing. It was 20 degrees.

"Well, this is exciting," I thought to myself.