What I’m working on: At the moment, my work falls into three main categories. First, I’m writing a book, tentatively titled Fish Story, on the wonder and diversity of fish, and their mighty but too-often-overlooked role in shaping our ecosystems and cultures (W.W. Norton & Co.). I began working on this book fairly recently, so I haven’t done much field reporting yet; right now I’m conducting lots of phone and Zoom interviews, devouring peer-reviewed literature on abstruse topics such as salmon navigation and sturgeon biogeography, and staring blankly at walls as I contemplate the futility of human endeavor (an indispensable component of any book-writing process!).
Second, I spend a lot of time publicly evangelizing about the topics of my previous books, road ecology and beaver restoration; I recently returned from a 10-day speaking tour in Montana, for example. Finally, I have a handful of freelance magazine articles in various stages of incompletion—everything from 5,000-word features to 800-word book reviews—for the likes of National Geographic, Smithsonian, High Country News, and Scientific American. These professional pursuits compete for primacy with backpacking and fishing trips, and often lose.
Where I work: My wife, Elise, and I live in a small town in Colorado’s Arkansas Valley, and love it. As of this spring, I have two physical workspaces: a small office in our small house, and a 10 x 18 ft. shed / tiny-house hybrid that we bought last year off Craigslist and stashed in the backyard. (The shed has been in our possession for much longer than it’s lived on our property—it took six months to find someone with a truck capable of moving the damn thing.) When the shed arrived, its walls and ceilings were essentially raw insulation held back by staples; we spent much of the spring installing wall panels, pegboard, and a tongue-and-groove ceiling. (This may sound minorly impressive, but a quick glance at our nail-gun job reveals just how lacking our construction skills are; still, it was a fun project.)
Now the shed has a desk and bookshelves, and has become my alternate office. I’m trying to create a separation of tasks behind the two workspaces: When I’m in the house, close to the Wi‑Fi router, I’m sending emails, invoicing, conducting Zoom interviews, and working on shorter-form articles. When I’m in the shed—now named the Shack, in Aldo Leopold’s honor—I’m doing focused work on my book with social media and Gmail browser tabs closed. Will I manage to maintain this divide? The world waits with bated breath.
Daily routine:
The beauty (and occasionally frustration) of this job is that there is no daily routine! Every day is slightly different: One might entail driving across Colorado for a book talk; the next, touring a federal fish hatchery, the next, waking up at 5:00 a.m. to Zoom with a source in Norway. Variety is the spice of freelancing, but it can also stymie the establishment of regular work habits. This has become especially true since my second book, Crossings, was published in September 2023, which has shifted an ever-larger portion of my focus and income toward public speaking, both remote and in-person. I really enjoy giving book talks—they feel like an extension of my broader purpose (i.e., educating the public about ecological issues)—but at times it does feel like talking about the work I’ve already done impedes my ability to write new stuff.
Most productive part of my day:
Because of that whole lack-of-routine thing, I don’t have a consistently productive time of day; I’m usually trying to squeeze in fruitful writing blocks around other commitments. This might be a good place to share an intention of mine: Whereas I wrote my first two books in sporadic torrents—the daily word count in a given week might have been 0, 0, 50, 2500, 0—my goal with the current one is to write 300 words daily, rain or shine (granted, that’s an aspiration, not an ironclad commitment). Less volcanic eruption, more Old Faithful.
Most essential ritual or habit:
I’ll be (no doubt) the thousandth Day-in-the-Lifer to extol the virtues of a dog for physical and mental health. Shout-out to Kit, the toughest pug/pit/Boston terrier hybrid in the West, who gets me out of the house twice a day and provides an endless supply of soul-restoring cuddles!
Favorite note-taking techniques/tools:
Nothing groundbreaking here, but: In the field, Rite in the Rain notebooks and pens are indispensable if you spend a lot of your time reporting in and around water, as I do. In the office, I record almost everything and run it through Otter (though of course always check the transcript against the recording!).
How I keep track of my to-do list:
I almost exclusively use the Notes app (on my laptop, not a phone, as we’ll see in a moment). I have two main to-do lists: one for book-related tasks (research materials to acquire, sources to contact, passages to write, etc.), and one for articles. The latter is, in turn, divided into four sections: stories in edits; stories assigned; stories I’ve pitched; stories I plan to pitch. Each story in those subcategories has, in turn, its own bulleted set of items: “Annotate for fact-checker”; “Incorporate new interview material”; “Nag that editor who ghosted you”; and so on. (“Make sure you get paid” is a common bullet.) This all makes it sound more deliberate than it is.
Essential software/apps/productivity tools:
My most essential productivity tool is the one that I don’t have: namely, a smartphone. I’ve been a proud flip-phone user since 2018, when I drowned my iPhone in a bass pond and interpreted my clumsiness as a sign from the universe that the time had come to revert. My flipperdom hasn’t made me some noble exemplar of social-media abstinence—I have a browser tab open to instagram.com as I type this!—and I couldn’t survive my life of proud Ludditism without Elise, who calmly directs me whenever I call her, lost and exasperated, from the side of the highway. But it has kept me away from certain addictive time-sinks, improved my sleep hygiene, and induced me to read more print books. I’m not sure I recommend a flip phone (it’s wildly inconvenient, and becomes more irritating as the QR code expands its hegemony; I can’t even read a menu anymore!) but it works for me.
Favorite time waster/procrastination habit:
Procrastination is the point of living in the Colorado mountains—and of freelancing in general! I cherish having the flexibility to forsake work for skiing on a bluebird winter day, or for fly-fishing during the spring mayfly hatch, or for mountain biking on a gorgeous summer afternoon, or for … you get the idea. I’m not sure that qualifies as procrastination per se (although I am often escaping a deadline when I embark on these activities), but I do believe in carpeing the diem in pursuit of outdoor recreation—it’s psychologically restorative, creatively stimulating, and keeps me connected with the rivers, forests, and wildlife I cover.
My reading habits: I usually have three books going at once: one (typically nonfiction) that I peruse during the workday for book research; one (either fiction or non-) that I read in the evenings for pleasure; and one audiobook (usually but not always a novel) that accompanies me on drives and dog walks. Although I’m an avowed flip-phoner, I do have a battered old iPhone without a data plan or social media apps that I use exclusively for audiobooks.
Some recent examples of each:
—Books for work: Why Fish Don’t Exist (Lulu Miller), Fishing (Brian Fagan), Running Silver (John Waldman).
—Books for pleasure: Go as a River (Shelley Read), Becoming Earth (Ferris Jabr), Trust (Hernan Diaz).
—Audiobooks: In My Time of Dying (Sebastian Junger), Normal People (Sally Rooney), Shark Heart (Emily Habeck).
Sleep schedule:
I’m generally reading in bed by 10:00 p.m., asleep by 10:30 or 11:00, and up at 6:30 a.m. A paragon of domesticity!