Carolyn Highland’s outdoor writing will drive readers and outdoor enthusiasts to “get outside” and experience all that the natural world has to offer.

Out Here is a collection of essays that explores what the wilderness has to teach us about the human experience, using outdoor endeavours as extended metaphors for greater truths. Each carefully chosen piece embarks on a different physical and metaphorical journey: managing expectations and reality during a medical emergency in a 40-mile ski mountaineering race; staring down fear and consequences on exposed ski lines in Alaska; re-examining self-reliance and decision-making through heartbreak and snow science; and leaving room for unexpected magic as a female travelling through Patagonia.

Highland’s first book inspires a deeper connection to the wilderness, a deeper connection to ourselves, and will leave readers wanting more from this fresh new voice in mountain writing.

Carolyn Highland is a writer and teacher with over 50 published essays in print and online, in publications such as Backcountry Magazine, The Ski Journal, A Worthy Expedition: The History of NOLS, Misadventures Magazine, The Leader, and the websites of Teton Gravity Research and the Outdoor Women’s Alliance, among others. She is a regular contributing writer to the Deuter blog and the NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) blog. Her writing has also been used in course readers on expeditions through NOLS, the Prescott College Outdoor Program, the Second Nature Wilderness Program, and NatureBridge. Carolyn received a BA in creative non-fiction writing from Northwestern University in 2012. Her essay “Parentage” won the Helen G. Scott Prize for Best Personal Essay from Northwestern’s English department that same year. She lives in Truckee, California, USA.

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