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Update, early spring 2022
Above: Annie Gribbins with some of her husband's emergency rescue gear, which has inspired us to think of new coping strategies as the pandemic winds down. My sister Anne Woodside Gribbins and I have published a new essay about coping strategies in the pandemic age....
Two weeks ago, as thin ice layers melted on the newly fallen leaves in New Hampshire's Crawford Notch, I said goodbye to a group of writers who'd spent the weekend with me for another Writing from the Mountains. These creatives were at varying stages of ideas and...
Symbols in a personal history
The forgotten Swiss Army knife is a character in my next book. I am writing a wilderness memoir. Appalachian Mountain Club Books will publish this book in a year. Writing personal history means I must do research on my own life. This story involves my two daughters,...
From endurance to hope
The last year and a half felt a little like an endurance race without the trail. Mentally I knew how to hold on and keep going, but physically, between the masks and atrial fibrillation—a common affliction of lifelong athletes (and a lot of other people) but which...
Tuesday, April 20: How to start a freelance career, 5-6 p.m.
If you have thought of working as a freelance journalist and want to hear how my 21-year freelance career has gone, join me for a free online talk sponsored by the University of Connecticut Journalism Department, where I am a visiting assistant professor this year....
News
Welcome! I am a writer, editor, and college lecturer based in New England. I explore people’s relationship to their landscapes. I hope you will stay here a while and get to know my work.
My new book Going Over the Mountain traces my evolution as a wilderness trekker. I followed others. I tried to teach my daughters resilience. I went alone. I came back to community. It comes out in September from Appalachian Mountain Club Books. Preorder it here.
I am doing some writing about the hard lives of New Jersey farmers in the twentieth century. I wrote a chapter in a book for Rutgers University Press (coming out soon) about New Jersey’s environmental past.
I am the editor-in-chief of Appalachia journal (submit button at the bottom of the page).
I teach journalism history at the University of Connecticut.
Libertarians on the Prairie tells how a secret collaboration on the Little House books reshaped the nineteenth-century American frontier story into a series of heroic tales that rebutted the policies of the New Deal. Libertarians on the Prairie is available in hardback and a paperback edition with a Foreword by Stephen Heuser. Order one today.
Going back in time a bit: I appeared in Don Bernier’s 2005 film, “In a Nutshell,” about a brilliant, eccentric artist who found herself homeless in her 90s. A clip here.
Book Excerpts
Libertarians on the Prairie
by Chris Woodside read more
New Wilderness Voices
Collected Essays from the Waterman Fund Contest Christine Woodside, editor; Amy Seidl, foreword A literary celebration of the Northeast’s wild places Guy and Laura Waterman spent a lifetime reflecting on and writing about the mountains of the Northeast. The Waterman...
My Secret Ledge
Photo of the ledge by Christopher Zajac for Estuary magazine. When I go there now, two or three times every week, I walk to the end of one road and trudge up a broken old woods road into the state forest. I step over ruts, where puddles linger long and narrow in dirt...
Duffel Bags, the Metaphor for Pandemic Coping
My sister Anne Woodside Gribbins and I wrote this article together. Annie (pointebypointe.wordpress.com) is a former ballet dancer and project manager for Tessitura Network. She lives in Titusville, New Jersey with her husband Joe and family. We are sisters living in...
Citizen Scientists Steer Efforts to Jump-Start Black Rock Harbor’s Recovery
This group devoted many early mornings in spring and summer as citizen scientists taking water samples to test the quality. Pictured are: Holly Turner, a teacher at the Bridgeport Regional Vocational Aquaculture School; Lyle Given, and Charlotte Hickey, both students....
Foul Spills at Black Rock Harbor Will Go On for Decades
On the west and east sides of narrow Black Rock Harbor in western Bridgeport, industry, school, recreation and sewage treatment converge. At the most inland tip are Santa Energy’s oil tanks. On the east side stretch asphalt runways at Pratt & Whitney’s test...
