Books in the Outdoor Lives series

Not just the whimsical coming-of-age story of a young woman ill-prepared for a month in the mountains but also the reflection of a distinctly feminine view of nature

The Columbia and its tributaries are rivers of conflict. Mike Barenti entered the heart of this conflict when he slid a whitewater kayak into the headwaters of central Idaho's Salmon River and started paddling toward the Pacific Ocean. This is a narrative of man and nature, one-on-one, but also of man and nature writ large.

Charts a moving landscape of people and places over the past twenty years

In June 1965 Adams made history as the first woman to sail solo from the mainland US to Hawaii. Four years later she finally sighted Point Arguello, California, after seventy-four days sailing a thirty-one-foot ketch from Japan, across the violent and unpredictable Pacific. This memoir recounts the inward journey that paralleled her sailing feats.

Over the past four decades, Bruce L. Smith has worked with most big-game species in some of the American West's most breathtaking and challenging landscapes. In Stories from Afield, readers join Smith on his adventures as a naturalist, sportsman, and wildlife biologist, as he pulls us into the field of learning and discovery.

Fisherman Mark Spitzer takes readers on an action-packed investigation of the most fierce and fearsome freshwater grotesques of the American West. Through the lenses of history, folklore, biology, ecology, and politics, Spitzer depicts the environmental destruction plaguing the most maligned creatures in our midst while subtly interweaving his experiences of personal tragedy and self-discovery.

A lifelong Alaskan, Steve Kahn moved at the age of nine from the "metropolis" of Anchorage to the foothills of the Chugach Mountains. A childhood of berry picking, fishing, and hunting led to a life as a big-game guide. The essays in The Hard Way Home offer a view of Alaska that is at once introspective and adventurous.

Longtime fly fisherman Quinn Grover had contemplated the "why" of his fishing identity before more recently becoming focused on the "how" of it. In Wilderness of Hope Grover recounts his fly-fishing experiences with a strong evocation of place, connecting those experiences to the ongoing national debate over public lands.