After serving two years in the Army, he published The Circle Home (1960), a novel about boxing, before going on the first of nine trips to Alaska and British Columbia.
According to the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Hoagland's love of solitude and silent observation of wildlife rather than social conversation may have resulted from a severe stammer that still persists.
This stammer has, according to Hoagland himself, influenced how he writes: "Words are spoken at considerable cost to me, so a great value is placed on each one.
His reluctance to speak may account for his desire to write—and be read—and for the sensitive visual, tactile, and olfactory images in his writings.
[1]Since his retirement, he has spent his summers in Barton, Vermont at a place he has owned since 1969, and his winters in Martha's Vineyard.