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Biography

During the 1980s, I picked up the sport of telemark skiing, but no, those aren’t “cross-country skis” I’m wearing. Telemarking is the oldest form of skiing, begun in Telemark, Norway in the mid 19^th century. It combines the love of the outdoors with a flair for technique and the weightless grace of snow. Certainly there’s a counter cultural element to it too: telemarking was revived in the eighties in Crested Butte, Colorado, in part as response to all that neon and glare. It takes part in the need to downsize and simplify, and lays bare (an awful metaphor for skiing) the free-spirited fun at the sport’s core. I picked up telemarking like many others, because I was bored with alpine skiing (though I taught it many years in Pocono Mountains), and it immediately made the mountain bigger and more challenging. Telemarkers talk of being able to “feel the skis” once again, and certainly they are closer to the snow. This form of skiing also allows for easier access into the backcountry. Whenever possible, I enjoy hiking or “skinning” up the mountain before free-heeling on the way down. Sidestepping both the lift prices and lines, this affords you a better feel for the surrounding climate and topography on the way up, and you savor the trip down.

Perhaps telemarking is a little like writing: at times graceful and elegant, at times a face plant in the snow. Even the latter can wake you up, and fresh snow tastes pretty good. Always, you want to carry only what is necessary, either for your trip up and for your readers to understand.

I also enjoy running. For some time, I ran everyday with my running partner, Mookie. Then, talk of sympathetic injuries, we both started to limp, our left knees growing stiff and creaky. I can still get out, with Ibuprofen and proper stretching, but Mook’s running days are behind him, as are his days of chasing squirrels. Mine may not be here for long, so I plan to revel in them while I can.

At The Colorado College, where I received my B.A., I had good teachers. They taught me the power and play of language and were passionate about their subject matter.  I became an English major after having an epiphany in Poor Richard’s bookstore on Tejon street—wanted to read everything in the store. The switch from pre-med to English didn’t go well at home. “That and a quarter will buy you and cup of coffee." I received my Master’s degree at Western Washington University, in the northwest corner of the U.S., where, in addition to reading and writing, I spring-skied Northwest volcanoes: Baker, Shuksun, Adams.

After that I moved to Ohio to take a job as a technical writer for architecture, engineering, and environmental consulting firms. That experience taught me to focus on my audience and on how to get them information. In January of 1993, the proprietor and sole-owner of A/E Marketeers, Catherine Copich, called on our firm to offer help with organization our information (organize my life?). Our first date to was a Baltimore O’s game. We also went to the beach in the rain. We spent two wind-swepted, rain-soaked nights camping in upper Michigan and on Mt. Lincoln in Vermont—cold, wet, and hungry is useful state of being.

I received my Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Catherine and I lived in a cottage in Hunting Valley near Squire Valleevue Farm, where we were also married in 1997.

I began teaching in a Writing Center and have since taught English courses in an independent, secondary school (The Pennington School); composition and professional communications at  community colleges (The University of Akron, Columbus State); and presently teach courses in composition, professional writing, and American literature, often with an environmental focus. 

During the spring semester of 2003, I was a visiting Fulbright Professor at the University of Maribor in Slovenia, an experience that expanded my notion of audience, making that of other cultures real. Today, my main audience, or rather I am theirs, is my two kids, Sam and Elliot, who take me through the narrow streets of a medieval city out to the hills and creeks beyond.

My book, Suveying the Interior: Literary Cartographers and the Sense of Place, is available through the University of Nevada Press. While traveling from New Jersey to Colorado to Washington to Ohio and now in Virginia, I became in the ways people give shape and give value to their varied landscapes.

Catherine, Sam, Elliot and I make our home in the New River Watershed in a one hundred year-old house with dog Mookie, cats Kiki and Allie, and snake Kacha. As much as possible, we spend our time outside: in the garden, on the river, under the trees.