I spend my time making stuff: compelling stories, woodwork, and outdoor gear — a combination less odd than it seems.
— writing —
I’ve written two acclaimed nonfiction books, a bunch of pieces that have been published in national magazines (Wired, Slate, Men’s Journal, McSweeney’s), and even more pieces of similar (or better!) quality that have gone unpublished.
Before landing in books, I worked in every flavor of media: a newspaper, a couple of magazines, a radio show, a documentary-television-production company, and a web-journal that was ultimately bought by Medium. I got very good at fact-checking. About the only thing I didn’t try was podcasting.
Since 2010, I’ve been a Ted Scripps fellow at the University of Colorado, an Alicia Patterson fellow, and an artist-in-residence at Rabbit Island.
I’m currently working on a top-secret piece of media criticism.
— woodwork —
I work as a carpenter in Santa Fe, New Mexico, mostly building gates — but over the last couple of decades I’ve also built pergolas, docks, bridges, boats, paddles, staircases, furniture (indoor and outdoor), fancy frames, custom cutting boards, and swanky signs inlaid with turquoise.
For what it’s worth, the discipline required by woodwork — in planning, assembly, precision, focus, creativity, and practice — is nearly identical to that required by writing, so I don’t see the two crafts as so unrelated.
— outdoor gear —
I’m the founder and owner of Mayfly Ultralight Equipment, which I started in 2020 to make lightweight camp shoes for backpackers. By good fortune, this endeavor involves combining my writing and making skills with my primary passion: the outdoors.
My last name means woodsman, and it fits, because for as long as I can remember I’ve yearned for the woods — as well as for rocks, rivers, peaks, and canyons. As such, I’ve been up all of the four-thousand footers in the White Mountains, all of the Oregon Cascades, and all of the Teton peaks, and nearly finished tagging the summits of all of the fourteeners in Colorado. A fan of endurance events, I’ve also raced alleycats, run marathons, skied the Birkie, ridden WRIAD (on a singlespeed), hiked the Colorado Trail, jogged rim-to-rim-to-rim at the Grand Canyon, biked across New England, and climbed a whole lot of long, remote, technical faces. Lately, a packraft has been involved. Point is: the product I developed was born of habit and necessity.
— otherwise —
I grew up in suburban Washington, D.C., studied environmental science at Dartmouth, and a few years later, studied science journalism at Boston University’s Knight Center for Science Journalism. Since 2006, I’ve bounced around the West, from a cabin in Moose, Wyoming, to a sailboat in San Francisco Bay. After a decade in Boulder, Colorado, I’m now in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I speak Spanish daily and lament the low snowfall of the Southern Rockies.
— reach out! —
