He is a contributing editor of Outside and has written articles for The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Mother Jones, Sports Illustrated, Harper's Magazine, Legal Affairs, Utne Reader and others.
He has also written a number of books, including The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier (1997) and The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird (2008).
After graduating from the University of Washington, he worked for Seattle Weekly for ten years as a writer and editor.
He was a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
In 2004 his cover story about the Bush Administration's changes to the Clean Air Act for The New York Times Magazine was judged the year's best piece of explanatory reporting by the Society of Environmental Journalists.