About Kate

The 300-word summary of my life to date: My travels started at the age of 11 months, when my ill-advised parents took my then six- and nine-year-old brothers and me on a European tour, grandma also in tow. Despite my usually ill temperament, I only cried about half the time and otherwise immensely enjoyed myself—perhaps a hint to future interests.

I grew up happily in Brookline, Massachusetts then moved to Irvington, New York when I was 16. At Dartmouth College, I studied art history and American literature, among other things. I also toiled as a coxswain for the varsity women's crew, discovered my inner dirtbag in the surrounding mountains, and occasionally pulled weeds at the organic farm.

While my college cohorts dutifully trucked off to law school, med school, and other respectable institutions, I bought a one-way ticket to Italy and went to work on organic farms in Sicily, Calabria, and Le Marche, eventually landing in Rome with an internship at the Associated Press bureau. I covered Italian Beatlemania, chocolate festivals, and other "news" while learning how to look stylish on the back of a photographer's Vespa.

After returning home, I road-tripped out to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I interned with Outside magazine and fell terribly in love with the Southwest's abundance of sunshine and blue skies. After working as assistant editor then research editor for Outside Traveler, I moved to Durango, Colorado to try freelancing.

I have stayed here happily ever since, writing and traveling to some extremely interesting places in the name of a good story. Along the way, I've had the opportunities to meet monks in Bhutan, dive with 1,000-pound bull sharks in Fiji, shoot blow-guns in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and track endangered rhinos for a conservation project in South Africa. I write essays as well as journalism on the environment, travel, health and fitness. When I'm home in Durango, I run, climb, bike, backcountry ski, practice yoga, coax vegetables to grow in my backyard, and tend to my calico-tabby cat, my boyfriend, and his large white dog.