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About the Author
I discovered journalism the first time I picked up a book by John McPhee. I began freelance writing while completing a degree in English at the University of Oregon, and soon after graduation landed a job as a reporter and editor at the Seaside (Oregon) Signal, followed by a reporting job with the Grants Pass Daily Courier in southern Oregon. After earning a master's degree in journalism, I began working as an associate editor for Sunset magazine, where I edited and wrote travel features focused on outdoor recreation and the natural world as well as the arts, culture and urban living. In 1990 I left full-time magazine editing to become a part-time freelance writer and editor and hospital public affairs writer. I've continued to write for Sunset while selling articles to such magazines as Backpacker, Women's Sports and Fitness, and Coastal Living. I've also written text for interpretive displays in hospitals, universities and museums from Olympia, Wash., to St. Louis, Mo.
I've been a hiker and skier all my life, and I've worked as a whitewater raft guide, wilderness youth leader and cross-country ski instructor. The opportunity to write my first guidebook for The Mountaineers Books -- a guide to hiking with children, currently titled Best Hikes with Kids: Oregon and now in its third edition -- appeared shortly after my son was born in 1989. A second Mountaineers Books guidebook, now titled Day Hiking: Oregon Coast, originally grew out of a Sunset magazine article exploring the undeveloped stretches of that state's 326-mile coastline.
In 1995 I signed up as a volunteer with Coastwatch, a program of the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition that monitors changes, natural and unnatural, on every inch of Oregon's shoreline. My latest book, Strand, arose from the experience of routinely walking Mile 157 on the central Oregon coast, puzzling over what I found.
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