So who am I, you might ask? A weighty question, one that I often ask myself. (Insert a moment for chin-scratching and dream-like music…) It all began in 1970 in a small college town in Ohio called Bowling Green (when you enter the town, it says "welcome to the National Tractor Pulling Championships and home of Scott Hamilton," its two claims to fame). From there, it was on to more cornfields in southern Indiana , where I stayed for four years at Indiana University before leaving with a shiny magazine journalism diploma under my arm. I went with it and, in 1992, moved to NYC to make my mark on the great magazines of the world—or, to be more precise, to make a lot of copies. I merrily toiled as an intern at Sassy magazine, then as an editorial assistant at Working Mother (or, as my friend Steve likes to say, Workin’ Mutha) before becoming an associate and then senior editor at Fit, followed by a stint as the fitness, outdoors and travel editor at Fitness.

I never really wanted to be an editor, though, I was just going that route in order to be a freelance writer. I also preferred a little green space in which to do my writing, which is how I found myself moving west in 2000 to Portland, Oregon. Now, I'm actually doing the things I've been writing about all these years—outdoors stuff. Since I’ve moved here, I’ve added trail-running shoes, snowshoes, a snowboard, a couple-a tents, mountain bike, a shiny green Subaru (hi, Sue!) and an eager yellow Lab to my outdoors collection.

While I will never be one of those people who talks about "fresh powder" with a gleam in her eye, and I kinda have to draw the line at 3 nights of backpacking in a row (a girl does like to have a hot shower now and again) I feel more at home here than I have anywhere—that’s because Portland has everything I want in a city with none of the hassles. So there you go. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.