About

Howdy! Thanks for stopping by. 

I’m a veteran journalist who specializes in covering all things connected to the environment. I have written about food and agriculture, climate change and energy, biodiversity conservation, wilderness protection, toxins and public health – and how all of those issues intersect with politics, law, and culture. I’ve tracked jaguars along the US-Mexico border, traveled to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, criss-crossed the mountains of Chilean Patagonia, and investigated the wasteland of the Canadian tar sands. I've hung out with farmers, biologists, fishermen, climate scientists, and activists and entrepreneurs who are working to protect and preserve the environment. At the end of one especially memorable reporting trip, I plunged into the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean.

Much of my journalism career has been spent in the editor’s chair. From 2007 to 2015 I was the editor of the environmental quarterly Earth Island Journal. I then spent the better part of a decade as the editor in chief of Sierra. Throughout the course of my career, I’ve kept up as freelance writer and have contributed to publications ranging from well known (The New York Times) to the more obscure (Gastronomica) to the dearly departed (The San Francisco Bay Guardian). You can find a selection of my writing here. 

I am the author of Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man (Island Press), which was praised in The Wall Street Journal as “a beautiful meditation on what it means to be wild in an age when wilderness is increasingly difficult to find.” My newest book, The Earth Said Remember Me: How to Revive Our Memories and Restore the Planet, will be published in July 2026 by W.W. Norton. 

I have a degree in international relations from Georgetown University and a certificate in ecological horticulture from UC-Santa Cruz. When not reading and writing, I can be found hiking, bird watching, backpacking, and tending my suburban homestead. I live with my partner and daughter in the heart of greater Cascadia, along with an obstreperous dog named Cody, a lazy cat named Simba, and 10 chickens