Doug Fine: Author, Journalist, Adventurer, Goat-Herder

Doug at work in one of his many offices

After growing up on Long Island (for those not from North America, that is the quintessential New York suburban glacial moraine) and graduating from Stanford University, Doug Fine’s method of journalistic investigation was to strap on a backpack and travel to five continents; to the nooks where the world’s monied media venues weren’t sending their people. These venues tended to be delighted to have a whippersnapper send along dispatches for poorly remunerated publication as long as he didn’t identify himself as an employee of said venues. Complicated insurance ramifications for torture treatment might ensue.

As a young freelancer, Fine reported in this manner for the Washington Post, Salon, U.S. News and World Report, Sierra, Wired, Outside and other venues from little-visited jungle war zones like Burma, Rwanda, Laos, Guatemala and Tajikistan. He became a world-class adventure writer and investigative journalist, writing culturally-insightful and funny dispatches. One of these, about democracy efforts in Burma, was read into the Congressional record.

During this time, his 20s, Fine recognized that he felt most alive while living and loving in wild ecosystems. Following this impulse in contradiction to all the suburban values with which he was raised (which can be summarized as, “if you’re not going to be a doctor, you can at least be a lawyer”), he moved to extreme rural Alaska to see if a former suburbanite could survive away from Costco. Happiness and self-awareness were the goals. This resulted in his award-nominated first book, Not Really An Alaskan Mountain Man, a book that has been well-reviewed across the country as a wildly-humorous and meaningful adventure narrative, and which is now in its third printing. For more info and to order signed copies, click here.

Realizing that living in sync with his ecosystem is indeed where his own inspiration and personal happiness resides, Fine for his second book has decided to see if he can truly live a sustainable lifestyle, rather than borrowing from Babylon to live in an ecological Zion. In 2005 at age 35, he moved to an obscure valley in Southern New Mexico to write Farewell, My Subaru, about the effort to live off fossil fuels and find his own salvation in the process. From solar panels to goat husbandry to driving a veggie oil truck, Fine is exploring whether an American can live a green life without becoming overwhelmed by electrocution or contradiction. That book was published by Random House in March of Gregorian 2008. You can order signed copies and Join Doug’s Mailing List.

Fine is a regular contributor of adventure and investigative features to National Public Radio. Samples of these can be heard here. He won more than a dozen press club awards while serving as news director at member station KHNS in rural Alaska.

Fine wrote about Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, hung out with mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and reported on the advent of wireless Internet access in the Yup’ik Eskimo communities of Western Alaska. And yet he can still barely get a fire started in his wood stove. He travels regularly to speak about his experiences to groups around the world, building on his many near-death experiences with polar bears and 40 below temperatures (and now mountain lions and solar panels in his greening life in New Mexico) to educate and entertain audiences. He enjoys drumming, spirit dancing, distance running, backpacking, rafting, meditation, singing at the top of his lungs, the art of conversation, the art of silence, and raising goats.