I am the editor of Appalachia journal, which publishes essays on adventures and the natural landscape in June and December; and Connecticut Woodlands, a quarterly about forests and trails.

This year I am writing a book about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. During the dark days of the Great Depression they captured  the crazy days of the frontier, from 1870 to 1885, into a hopeful story that changed the way Americans view pioneers.

My book Energy Independence (Lyons Press, 2006 and 2009) describes where Americans get their fuel and the ways an ordinary citizen can begin to use alternatives.

I have written for dozens of periodicals, known and obscure. My published work includes hundreds of articles for The New York Times and dispatches on climate change, energy, water, and backcountry adventure for Audubon, Popular Mechanics Online, the Washington Post, Connecticut Explored magazine, the Hartford Courant, the Connecticut Mirror, Nature Climate Change, and the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media, for which I write regularly.

I have freelanced since 2000. I started my career in newspapers, in Philadelphia, Westchester County, and—for 13 years—New London, Connecticut, at The Day, where I was a staff editor and writer. I have therefore covered fires, murders, small-town politics, weird characters, the arts, and business.

A huge watershed in my life came in 1987, when I hiked the entire Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine with my husband and two friends. At the end of four and a half months of constant hunger and foot pain, I emerged with a sense of the power of storms and the miracle of running water—and the beauty of the Eastern woods.

Thank you for stopping by. I hope you'll take some time to read samples of my work here and elsewhere, and to read about my background in the Woodside Field Guide.

Chris