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BY KATY SPENCE
The highway between Groveland, California, and the entrance to Yosemite National Park doubles back on itself. During the 2013 Rim Fire, a group of local media parked on the bend and watched the fire roar straight up the mountain, over the road ahead of them and across the road behind them. Photojournalist Al Golub, retired and 70 years old at the time, and ABC video/photographer Mark Pepper were among the media trying to decide if it was safer to go back down the mountain or try to push ahead of it.
Pepper said Golub jumped in his truck and drove back down the road looking for fallen trees or fire remnants. Minutes later, he called the folks on the bend to let them know that it was safe. Golub led them out of danger that day, Pepper said.
Over the last half century, Golub has photographed breaking news events and professional football, but what he’s become best known for are his images of wildland fires.
Golub’s first wildland fire was in 1987. As chief photographer of the Modesto Bee, Golub led the internship program at the California daily. “Papa bear,” as he was known, often suggested that the young photographers accompany a fire crew in the field, where they could meet other young people in high-energy, high-action zones. Eventually, the county manager asked Golub why he’d been sending interns to the fire line when he’d never been there himself.
The next thing Golub knew, he was in the office of Stanislaus Hotshots Superintendent Greg Overacker taking the step test to prove he was fit enough for the field.
Golub and his reporter accompanied Overacker’s team to a fire in Markleeville, California, that year. They started at an elevation of 6,700 feet and fought the fire up another 1,800 feet for almost 2 miles, a strenuous climb for even the most experienced wildland firefighter.
“The fact that I didn’t die, the guys decided they liked me,” Golub said.
Golub won an award for this story and began to gain notoriety for his wildland fire photography.
Golub’s photography education began before he ever picked up a camera. Growing up in Hollywood, California, he learned about composition and light as a storytelling device from black and white movies. At 12, a family friend gave him a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye 620 camera and Kodak Hobby developing kit.
“The magic started there,” Golub said. “My love for chemistry and photography was in my DNA. The neighborhood kids’ parents were in the movie industry and loved photography too. The geeky kids like me had lots of willing subjects to photograph who wanted to be stars.”
Due to family pressures, he pursued chemical engineering in college, but left to join the U.S. Air Force in 1962. In spite of his hopes of photographing the troops, he was assigned to be an air traffic controller at Castle Air Force Base near Merced, California. After the discovery and removal of a benign tumor in one of his lungs the following year, Golub finally got the chance to take photos and joined the staff of the Valley Bomber, the Castle Air Force Base newspaper.
“The next thing I knew, I was Airman Golub of the Valley Bomber,” he said.
Six months after Golub became the Valley Bomber photographer, the newly assigned director of information, Maj. George Herkert, called Golub into his office. Herkert had taught at the Modern School of Photography in New York City and was a well-known photojournalist. Herkert taught and mentored Golub and encouraged him to join the National Press Photographers Association. Through the organization, Golub met prolific photojournalists who taught him ethics and the rule he still lives by behind the camera.
“Tell the truth with the camera and make sure the pictures you use tell the truth,” Golub said. “I’ve been sworn to that since the beginning.”
Golub started working for the Modesto Bee after an honorable discharge from the Air Force in 1966. During his time at the Bee, he covered news events such as the disappearance of Laci Peterson, a pregnant woman who was later discovered murdered, in 2002, and Muhammad Ali speaking in Modesto in 1971. Golub covered the NFL, taking pictures at Raiders and 49ers home games. He photographed the KKK on a number of occasions, as well as bands such as Fleetwood Mac and Journey. He created images of Robert F. Kennedy, just days before his assassination.
“My job was to make images, tell stories, inform people and show people how horrible it was or how wonderful it was,” Golub said.
Mike Dunbar, director of integrated operations of the Modesto Bee, said Golub was instrumental in helping the Bee transition from film to digital, calling him a “visionary.”
In the course of working for the Bee, Golub was photographing eagles in Glacier National Park when a colleague suggested he join OWAA. He did so in December 1986, sponsored by photographer Gary Zahn. He’s been an active member ever since, though conference always seems to fall right in the middle of fire season, he said.
At 74, Golub is taking fewer risks, but still capturing fires from behind the camera. He also teaches photojournalism classes at Modesto Junior College and is always willing to teach anyone who comes to him for help, said photographer Wesley Shultz. When Schultz was struggling with his own photography, a 15-minute conversation with Golub completely transformed his style. Golub is a living legend in the region, and most established photojournalists know of him, have worked with him or learned from him, Schultz said.
But for Golub, photojournalism isn’t about name recognition. What draws him back to photography is the story.
“What makes a good photojournalist is one that knows enough about the subject to emotionally have their own opinion, to be able to see what they’re looking at and understand it and know when to put the shutter down,” Golub said. “Is your brain telling you, ‘This tells the story?’”
[box size=”large”]SEE AL GOLUB’S WORK: Photographer Al Golub started shooting wildfires and the crews who battle them in 1987. Check out his fire images, as well as the many other subjects he’s documented throughout his career, at http://algolub.photoshelter.com/.[/box]
–Katy Spence is a journalism graduate student at the University of Montana and former OWAA intern.

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BY TAYLOR WYLLIE
From her perch on the small island, Colleen Miniuk-Sperry saw the glint of a silver boat. While her heart swelled with relief, physically she crumbled. The adrenaline that had gotten her here — safe, though stuck on a small piece of land outside the Forgotten Canyon — had been replaced by such deep-seated exhaustion, she began to sob.
She had been rescued.
Her November 2015 trip began as an ambitious adventure, a 14-day stand-up paddleboarding expedition spanning 147 miles across the Colorado River and Lake Powell with her mother, Jacque Miniuk, tagging along in a kayak. The two had it all planned, knowing where and when they’d sleep each night, monitoring the weather, and informing local friends about their whereabouts. They’d even gone on two test runs earlier that year.
The first three days had gone well. Or well enough. On day two the duo were rained out and spent the majority of their time marooned on a 300-foot island. But day three was perfect, blue skies, calm water, summer breeze despite it being November kind-of perfect.
But day four?
“All Hell broke loose,” Miniuk-Sperry said.
The water raged. Five- to six-foot swells swallowed her mother’s 20-foot ocean kayak for minutes at a time. A cross-breeze brought strong winds from side. The two battled it out for three hours and 15 miles. There was no place else to go. Giant cliff walls trapped Miniuk-Sperry and her mother on the river. They had to keep moving forward.
When they got to their intended destination at Forgotten Canyon, they weren’t able to find the campsite that had been promised by guidebooks. And they couldn’t go back.
“My mom is absolutely done,” Miniuk-Sperry said. “She’s just standing there, shaking.”
That’s when they saw the ranger in the silver boat and flagged him down. He had been making the rounds when he stumbled upon them, and warned them that the storm wouldn’t end for another five, six days at the earliest.
Their trip was over.
Miniuk-Sperry returned home and didn’t speak with anyone for the better part of a week.
Like everything else in life she’d meticulously planned the trip. But even with all the planning and foresight she’d found herself adrift, in need of rescue.

Corporate beginnings

For Miniuk-Sperry, 41, success can be broken into three distinct steps:
No. 1: Find a passion.
No. 2: Work harder than everyone else.
No. 3: Associate yourself with people more talented than you.
The formula has worked for her since childhood when the 5’11” woman excelled in gymnastics and volleyball. The latter carried her through all four years of college on a full-ride scholarship both at Stanford for one year and later the University of Michigan. She graduated with a degree in business administration computer information systems in 1997.
When she landed a job at Intel doing “everything, but coding,” she was living the quintessential American dream.
Only, she’d come home crying.
“Everybody gets in a routine,” her mother said. “I have to go to school. I have to go to college. I have to do this, I have to do that. Sometimes we forget there is something called love of life.”
Miniuk told her daughter she should try a hobby. She suggested photography.
Miniuk-Sperry signed up for an introductory class at a local community college in 2001, figuring she had nothing to lose.
Immediately, she signed up for four more.
Her favorite subjects immediately became landscapes and the outdoors. It offered her stress relief and a way to show her love of the places she traveled.
Photography became like volleyball in high school, or business school in college; she applied her formula, and success followed.
She quit her job at Intel to pursue photography full time on Feb. 28, 2007, a day she calls her personal independence day and which she celebrates each year like her birthday.
On the advice of established photographers, she went commercial her first year she started shooting full time. She earned good money, but she wasn’t feeling fulfilled by the images she created of architecture, food and the other subjects clients requested.
Then she came to her first OWAA conference in 2010 in Rochester, Minnesota. The late Jim Smith invited her to present on travel photography after she talked at his Grand Photo Club and the two bonded over their love of nature photography.
“It was like coming home to the mothership,” said Miniuk-Sperry, who has since served on the board of directors and is now the organization’s secretary.
At the conference she saw an entire community of people making money at what she had deemed the impossible — photographing the outdoors. She went home from the conference and dropped most of her commercial clients.
She’s now authored and photographed three books and an instructional e-book. Her work has appeared in magazines, calendars and on people’s walls as fine art.
“She really exploded onto the scene,” Paul Gill, a photographer who works closely with Miniuk-Sperry, said. “She understands the camera probably more than anyone I’ve ever known.”
Her brain’s ability to understand the technical aspects of a camera taught her one piece of photography. OWAA and a child taught her the other.

Experience lasts a lifetime

Miniuk-Sperry has always found peace in the rocky beaches, granite peaks and northern woodlands of Acadia National Park. She’s co-written books on the place and was an artist-in-residence at the park three times.
She also taught basic photo skills to kids in a residential education program she helped create in the park. It was while teaching kids she’d learn one of the most important lessons of her career: passion.
“This fourth or fifth grader, he loses his marbles,” Miniuk-Sperry said. “You’d think an alien spaceship landed.”
Instead he’d spotted a mushroom poking up from the ground. A mushroom he needed to photograph.
The kid was jealous of Miniuk-Sperry because he thought her job was going around finding these mushrooms and snapping a picture. Only, at this point, it wasn’t. She never felt as excited as that kid was over a mushroom.
“So what if I go around and start losing my marbles too,” she said she asked herself.
She now won’t take a photograph unless she feels that excitement. In her photography she’d found a way to blend her technical skills with passion. But in the rest of her life, she ignored the lesson from what she calls “The Mushroom Story” and lived by spreadsheets and detailed plans.
And then she ended up on an island in the middle of the Colorado River, crying to a park ranger. She’d planned the trip to every last detail and still she’d been bested by Mother Nature. And that was OK, and maybe what she needed.
The whole day was so formative and inspiring, she’s writing a book. In the week following the failed expedition, the week she originally blocked out to paddleboard, she wrote nearly half of the 53,000-word manuscript.
The part-memoir, part-adventure tale, will probably hit bookshelves in the spring of 2017. In it Miniuk-Sperry explores her recent ups and downs in life including a divorce and the infamous paddleboarding trip.
“I want people to be inspired and not really worry about success or failure,” she said.
Because to her that’s what life had always been about, that three step formula and only two outcomes, success or failure.
On the outside Miniuk-Sperry looks the same as she did a year ago. She keeps her dark hair cropped to her chin. She wears long flowing skirts. She often carries a camera. But observe her long enough and you might notice something different.
She stops to enjoy the world, smelling the trees, touching the bark.
“Achievement lasts 30 seconds,” Miniuk-Sperry said. “Experience lasts a lifetime.” 
— Taylor Wyllie was an OWAA intern and is a student at the University of Montana, studying journalism and environmental studies. She’s worked for the independent student newspaper, The Montana Kaimin and her work has appeared on Montana PBS, Montana Public Radio and in the Missoulian.

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BY TAYLOR WYLLIE
The sun was setting over the white sands. Light pinks, faded blues and hazy oranges cast a shimmery glow on the dunes.
Danielle Taylor stood in the center of it all soaking in the silent beauty of the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. She felt content. Finally.
“Last year I was really not a happy person,” Taylor said.
Last year was 80-hour work weeks and backaches from sitting in a desk chair all day. Last year was telling herself she would pursue freelancing — eventually, meanwhile writing the same types of articles for the same publication for the same people day in and day out.
An editor at a magazine covering parks and recreation, she was burnt out from the daily grind that comes with full-time work at a publication.
“In some sense, I loved the job,” Taylor said. “I was writing about parks and recreation. I felt like I was supporting the field.” But in other ways Taylor knew things had to change.
Last summer, at 29 years old, Taylor realized if ever there was a time to gamble with her career, now was it.
“I don’t even have a boyfriend, I don’t have kids, I don’t have a mortgage,” Taylor said. “This is the perfect time in my life to take a risk like this.”
She left her rental and moved her belongings to a family home in Pennsylvania.
With nothing holding her back, in the fall of 2015 Taylor decided for the next year (or two or three) she’d live out of her car and travel across the United States, visiting all 59 national parks and at least some of the other 352 public lands managed by the National Park Service, including the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. She planned to sell stories about her journey
and the parks she visited, using the park service’s Centennial in August as a news hook.
It was a way to live out a dream of exploring the outdoors and writing about it she’d harbored since she was a child growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Taylor always loved words, her mother Sue Taylor said. She learned to read by the time she was 4 years old. She won her first writing contest with a poem she wrote in second grade. In middle school she’d read the local newspaper and point out punctuation errors — for fun.
Her father Bob Taylor often found his only daughter 12 to 15 feet up in a tree reading. She spent her summer nights beneath a tarp in her backyard, preferring the feel of the grass and sight of the stars to four concrete walls and a mattress.
Outside magazine, which Taylor subscribed to as a teenager, inspired her efforts to be an outdoor journalist. It was king of all jobs. She could write, recreate and travel. And get paid for it.
Always itching to be somewhere else, Taylor went out-of-state for school, attending the University of Maryland where as a junior she participated in the Semester at Sea program. She visited about a dozen countries in three months.
She felt odd when she returned. At 22, she’d been across the world, but seen little of her own country.
Taylor graduated in 2009 with degrees in English and magazine journalism and human geography, a resume including four internships and strong grades and no job offers as the global economy destructed.
She decided to spend her savings on a cross-country road trip and loaded her dog, Paxton, an 80-pound retriever mix, into her dad’s old pickup truck.
She made it to Idaho, saw Yellowstone National Park and herds of wild bison for the first time and was about to head south when an emergency with a good friend forced her back home weeks before she’d planned to return.
For years, she tried to finish her road trip to the Southwest. But only two weeks of vacation time a year didn’t allow her the flexibility she needed.
This year she finally had the opportunity to finish that trip and see even more.
She’s paddled down the Mississippi River, hiked 750 feet into the Earth at Carlsbad Caverns National Park and stood alone on a trail near Guadalupe Mountain, watching a heard of mule deer roam nearby.
She works from the homes of friends, at coffee shops and even in her Subaru Outback. One time, while pulled over in a veterinary clinic parking lot in small-town Iowa, a police officer approached her after she’d tripped a silent alarm of some sort. He worried she was staking out the place. He now follows her adventures on her blog.
She’s written listacles for Alamo’s website about the parks. Blue Ridge Outdoors has her writing 60 blog posts for its website on her experiences.
But she’s not limiting herself to national park stories. In early June, she biked and walked along a 240-mile-long trail in a Missouri state park for a story for Rails to Trails magazine. 
Amy Knapp, editor at Rails to Trails, said it’s essential for people like Taylor to tell these parks’ and trails’ stories after actually experiencing them. It gives them needed insight on the culture of that particular area.
Taylor has written for Knapp multiple times.
“Danielle has already proven to me that she can be successful at the freelance life,” Knapp said.
And the freelance life isn’t easy, Knapp said. Reporters need drive, networking skills, the ability to hear the word “no” all while pitching new, creative stories. In Taylor’s case she also needs the flexibility to live on the road: the capacity to face an unsteady income, showers at truck stops and strangers peering into her car windows while she sleeps.
While trying to figure out where to lay her head for the night during her trip at White Sands, Taylor met a fellow solo-female traveler. Before the sun set, the two new friends slid down the slick, bleach-white dunes on their sleds, whooping and laughing in the otherwise quiet park.
It was the sort of night that Taylor said makes her really happy.
“It’s kinda like when you’re outside all day and you have to pee in the woods,” Taylor said. “To me that always makes me happy — it’s like I’ve actually been outside and exploring for so long, I can’t just hold it until I’m back in civilization.”
To follow Taylor’s journey, head to her website www.adventureeditorial.com. 
— Taylor Wyllie is an OWAA intern and student at the University of Montana, pursuing a degree in both journalism and environmental studies. She’s reported and edited for the independent student newspaper, The Montana Kaimin, for two years and her work has appeared on Montana PBS, Montana Public Radio and in the Missoulian.

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Marsha Sue evolves into avid outdoorswoman

BY PETER VAN HORN
When Marsha Sue married Al Sue 21 years ago, she promised they would stay open to each other’s passions. He loved the outdoors. A Southern California executive, she had never been in a truck or worn jeans — she assumed they were only for farmers. As a wedding gift, the newlywed Marsha Sue received a shotgun.
Al and Marsha Sue met through a dating service. Neither of them had time for traditional dating, Al Sue said. He knew right away his future bride wasn’t used to the outdoors, but with his help she became an avid hunter, angler and camper.
The couple delved into their respective interests and began to explore the world. Marsha Sue’s former career in an executive financial position had involved looking at “broken” companies and deciding whether to fund them. After years of living in Los Angeles, she wasn’t fully prepared for a new life immersed in the outdoors. Yet, she learned about hunting and fishing, activities that are now mainstays in her life.
“It’s been one hell of a transition,” her husband said.
After her career as an executive, Sue was tired of working for big organizations. She had developed communication skills during her years in finance, but she wanted to change topics. So she started working for herself, as a public speaker with a focus on leadership and personal development. Her speaking led her to take up writing as well. Her husband saw her talent as a communicator from day one.
“She is a bright lady, with an incredible ability to listen to people and pick up what they say and contribute to the conversation,” he said.
Sue stayed open to her husband’s passion. She embraced life as an outdoors-woman, hunting zebra in Africa and helping her friends from California accessorize camouflage.
Trying new things outside of her comfort zone was important to her and something she constantly pursued.
“Doing the unexpected and challenging myself is something I have to do every day,” she said.
She was doing just that- the challenging and unexpected- when she met Sandy Froman.
A lawyer, Froman is a former president of the National Rifle Association and has been an NRA board member for more than two decades. Sue met Froman in 2003, at Babes with Bullets, a women’s-only firearms camp, where they hit it off immediately. After years of hunting and exploring together, Froman says Sue is, above all else, prepared.
“You could have an emergency breakdown with her and end up having a steak dinner with champagne,” Froman said.
She recalled a hunting trip with Sue. They were hunting antelope; Froman had already tagged her animal and they were searching for another for Sue. On a small overlook, Froman watched as Sue, still holding her rifle safely, began to jump around and high step back from where she was standing. A rattlesnake had emerged from a crevice right in front of her.
“And it was a big snake too,” Froman said.
No snakes or professional speakers were harmed, and the two women still joke about the trip as the time Froman learned that Sue could dance.
Froman got Sue involved in the NRA, and helped grow Sue’s interest in guns and gun rights. Whether in the field or the office, Froman liked to have her around.
“She’s a ball of fire, energetic, enthusiastic, upbeat, and very friendly and outgoing,” Froman said.
In addition to speaking and writing, Sue volunteers for several conservation organizations. She is president of the Women’s Outdoor Media Association, a member of the NRA Women’s Leadership Forum Executive Committee with Froman, and a member of the Arizona Antelope Foundation.
Some of Sue’s work with the antelope foundation involves removing or modifying fences. Because antelope go under fences, the group removes barbs from the lowest wire, or removes the fence altogether, to help protect the animals from injury.
Outdoor Experience for All also gets her attention. Sue is passionate about getting others involved in conservation and into wilderness. Outdoor Experience for All is a nonprofit that gives terminally ill children a chance to explore and enjoy nature. As a volunteer she helps in any area she can, from organizing banquets to participating in activities with the kids.
On top of all that, Sue still writes and speaks professionally. She also goes outdoors with her husband and friends as often as possible. Staying busy and involved is important to her. She has produced more than 30 books, CDs and DVDs, and her books have been translated into several languages.
“My mission in life is to give back more than I receive and connect my head and my heart to my mouth,” she said.
-Peter Van Horn is a student at the University of Montana. He believes that outdoor journalism is an essential tool to address real environmental issues. Van Horn is also interested in feature writing and wilderness photography. He joined OWAA as a journalism intern for the summer of 2013.
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BY PETER VAN HORN
Carey Kish was 18 years old when he through-hiked the Appalachian Trail. He got the idea when he was 11 and, until he was ready to begin, he carried Edward Garvey’s “Appalachian Hiker” with him like a bible. In his hometown of Bangor, Maine, the high school principal and teachers and Kish’s parents agreed to let him graduate early so he could start the 2,150-mile trek.
“The experience was so powerful that I think about it every day,” Kish said.
He hiked south to north, from Georgia to Maine, so every step brought him closer to home, and when Kish smelled the Maine air, he slowed down and opened himself up to the experience. It was 1977, after four months of hard work he was on the home stretch. Kish could finally relax and enjoy the adventure.
Years before he was prepared for the Appalachian Trail, Kish developed an interest in writing. In his childhood, he wrote about many outdoor explorations. His hometown and his enthusiasm for hiking earned him the nickname the “Bangor Maineiac.”
After high school and the Appalachian Trail, he started working a day job to support his adventures and his writing. Kish also wrote the newsletter for the Maine Outdoors Adventure Club, a group he cofounded, without pay. It was a preparation for bigger and better things.
The time he spent on the Appalachian Trail eventually motivated Kish to become one of its many stewards. Dana Thurston maintains a stretch adjacent to one of Kish’s. The two have been good friends since they met in the late ‘80s through a mutual friend. Thurston through-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 1991 with Kish’s help. He also saw the early days of MOAC.
“He was instrumental in the first decade of the club, either as the president or being on the board to some capacity,” Thurston said.
Then in the summer of 2010, the Appalachian Mountain Club offered Kish the chance to edit the 2012 edition of their “Maine Mountain Guide.” The job suited him perfectly.
“I had hiked 80 percent of the trails in that book already, it’s like I had been researching to edit that book for years,” Kish said.
Kish set to work hiking some of the trails in the book again, making corrections and incorporating his own observations. The 10th edition of the “Maine Mountain Guide” included 200 new trails and 75 new peaks when Kish was done with it.
John Mullens serves as the education chair and coordinates monthly talks for the Maine chapter of AMC. He says Kish is his first choice to present to an audience. Photographs taken by Kish complement his easy-going, natural presence. The combination creates an experience Mullens says really draws a crowd.
“I know people who come to hear him are sitting there spellbound, listening to his adventurous tales, and wishing Carey would ask them to join him on his next adventure,” Mullens said.
Mullens bought land in Vermont after he went looking for the peace and tranquility Kish promised he would find on the Freezeout Trail in Baxter State Park. He has since built a cabin and made plans to move.
“It’s Carey’s fault that my wife and I are moving to Vermont,” Mullens joked.
Kish joined OWAA in 2010; for him it was the logical next step since he was already a member of the New England Outdoor Writers Association and an editor for AMC.
“I wanted to become a member because of their reputation,” Kish said.
The network OWAA provided was also attractive to him. He hopes to start establishing himself in that network by attending his first conference this year. Maine is still home for Kish and his wife Fran Leyman.
Leyman and Kish married four years ago. She is the perfect companion for his adventures, he says. Together they have a mountain of outdoor gear and two cats.
Kish has bachelor’s degrees in anthropology, geography and forestry as well as a master’s in business administration. He holds a day job at the Greater Portland Council of Governments, where he is the director of community outreach and cooperative purchasing, a title he wishes he could swap for “the director of stuff.”
He also edits the AMC Wilderness Matters newsletter and is working on another book. His book will be the next in the AMC Best Day Hikes series. The book will focus on a stretch of the Maine coast from Kittery to Lubec.
“I’m finding a lot of trails I haven’t done and fabulous hikes I didn’t know about,” he said.
In addition, Kish writes and takes photos for various publications, and the Portland Press Herald has featured his hiking column for 10 years.
Kish says he feels privileged to write about the outdoors and share his experiences with others. Inspiring young people to seek adventure through his writing, photography and public speaking is his goal, and he believes in the power journalists hold to conserve the environment and motivate the public.
“We need stewards, we need to motivate young people,” Kish said. “Don’t waste any time, you can do everything you want to do, I mean everything.” ◊
Peter Van Horn is a student at the University of Montana. He believes that outdoor journalism is an essential tool to address real environmental issues. Van Horn is also interested in feature writing and wilderness photography. He joined OWAA as a journalism intern for the summer of 2013. Contact him at pvanhorn@owaa.org

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BY JAKE McGINNIS
According to Michigan author and freelance writer Tom Huggler, there are no secrets in outdoor writing. He doesn’t have a little tip for selling articles. Success in outdoor writing, he insists, is all about careful planning and hard work.
“It’s always been a buyer’s market,” said Huggler. “So it’s a challenge of getting the pieces of the puzzle together. You need to find the pieces, get the editor’s attention, study the market, and then craft the piece. Then you can turn in an article that they simply can’t turn down.”
Huggler’s observation comes after a noteworthy career as an outdoor writer. He published his first story, a piece on muskrat trapping, when he was 12 years old. He was 17 when he placed an article in the January 1963 issue of Outdoor Life, a piece that fetched him a $350 paycheck. That article, a hunting story titled “Crows a la carte,” was by no means a shortcut into the industry, though.
“It took me 15 years to sell the next,” he said, chuckling.
After college, Huggler pursued a career in education. He taught high school English, served as an administrator and pursued writing on the side, particularly during summers. By 1974 he was writing enough to qualify for membership in OWAA, but his writing remained a weekend profession.
It wasn’t until 1982, with a year’s leave of absence and a carefully calculated savings account, that Huggler stepped tentatively into the outdoor communications industry. He knew precisely how much money he would have to make as a writer, and he was prepared to return to the classroom in the event he didn’t meet that goal.
Today, he tells the story with ease. He marks 1982 as the start of his full-time writing career, and that savings account, tucked away in case he couldn’t make ends meet, ended up financing a family vacation in Europe. For Huggler, outdoor communications ended up paying off.
Ralph Stuart, the editor of Shooting Sportsman magazine, has worked with Huggler for some 25 years. For him, the reason for Huggler’s success is simple.
“Tom is the epitome of what I would like to be if I was a writer rather than an editor,” he said. “He’s always working — always photographing, always taking notes, always observing details — and it shows in his writing.”
Jake Smith, editor at The Pointing Dog Journal, has also seen the results of Huggler’s dedication to the craft. He describes Huggler’s regular column, Eastern Encounters, as a joy to read. “It’s one of the few manuscripts I receive each issue which I find myself reading with a cup of coffee instead of a red pen,” he said.
Huggler’s work doesn’t always end when an article is submitted, though. He still works closely with editors, who he describes as a gateway to readers. Red marks are an important part of the writing process.
“He’s always been a great person to work with because there isn’t much of an ego there,” Stuart said. “He’s proud of what he turns in, but he’s not afraid to change it.”
Huggler put it another way. “Not every piece is a home run,” he said, “but if you’re going to write for someone is has to be a best effort.” And that includes whatever it takes to make that story perfect.
These days, Huggler publishes about 25 articles a year, including regular columns for three magazines. During the peak of his career, though, he was selling 150 to 175. He served as the camping editor of Outdoor Life and has worked in film, television and public relations. Over the course of two decades he penned 20 books, including the Fish Michigan series, “The L.L. Bean Guide to Upland Bird Hunting,” “Quail of North America,” “The Camper’s and Backpacker’s Bible” and “Fall of Woodcock,” among others.
Forty years in the outdoor communications industry has established a fine reputation for Huggler and his work.
Stuart sums it up nicely. “To me, Tom is a consummate professional. That’s the reason why he has been as successful as he has.”
A reputation like that can only be the result of true dedication to craft. Huggler admits, though, that a few good friends make things a lot easier.
“If it wasn’t for OWAA I wouldn’t have been as successful as I have,” he said. “The membership of OWAA is a cherished group of people.”
Still, Huggler’s achievements are strictly his own, and after forty years as an outdoor writer his advice ought to be taken seriously. No matter the story, the pay or the point in one’s career, only a best effort will do. That, he says, is the only secret. ◊
Jake McGinnis is currently completing a bachelor’s degree in writing at Northland College, where he serves as an editor of an independent student newspaper and a writing tutor. A lifelong outdoors enthusiast, he enjoys canoeing, fly-fishing and Nordic skiing. McGinnis was OWAA’s summer journalism intern.

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