Contributing Editor Mark Sundeen has explored and written about the West for 25 years. His four books look at the relationship between humans and nature. They include The Unsettlers, Car Camping, The Making of Toro, and The Man Who Quit Money, which was a national bestseller and has been translated into six languages. A contributing editor for 国产吃瓜黑料, his work has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic 国产吃瓜黑料, The Believer, and Best American Essays.
He is a professor of environmental writing at the University of Montana, held the Russo Chair in Creative Writing at University of New Mexico, and was a visiting writer in at the University of Utah鈥檚 Environmental Humanities program. The 2023 recipient of the Ellen Meloy Desert Award, Sundeen has won fellowships from MacDowell, Utah Arts Council and Montana Arts Council, and the Center for Land-Use Interpretation. Sundeen has won numerous awards from the Society of American Travel Writers. He worked 11 years as a river guide and Outward Bound instructor in Southern Utah, West Virginia and Alaska, and was co-founder of the desert 鈥榸ine Great God Pan.
His interests include Western politics, indigenous-led climate resistance, the effects of industrial tourism, outdoor ethics, and radical simplicity as a means of dissent against capitalism. His next book, Delusions & Grandeur, to be published in 2025, includes six longform stories originally published in 国产吃瓜黑料. He lives with his family in Missoula, Montana.
Published
A frustrated mountain biker is tired of his buddies riding their e-bikes on trails where they aren鈥檛 allowed. Plus, his friends routinely drop him.
Our ethics columnist helps a property owner navigate a dilemma that pits him against pesky locals who are trashing his land
Our ethics columnist weighs in on the dilemma about when a predator has the right to act like a predator鈥攁nd when it crosses the line
The pros and cons of plugging in when your lifestyle takes you off the grid
For decades, field technicians have scoured the Mojave Desert monitoring threatened tortoises. Their searches sometimes uncovered human remains. Our writer untangles a mystery dug up by the turtle counters.
Navigating the ethics when resort-town absentee landlords crack down on law-breaking locals
A frustrated reader knows it's bad form, but wants to break the rules to secure a riverside site anyway
A frustrated reader feels taken advantage of. But should he?
A reader and their partner recently squared off over the $10 cancellation fees on campground reservations
A worried reader wants to ban Elon Musk鈥檚 satellite internet provider from our wild places
A frustrated reader asks if we can prohibit Sprinter-van telecommuters on their laptops in the great outdoors
With Lake Mead drying up due to drought and climate change, the famous desert reservoir is revealing grisly secrets from the past, including the remains of people thought to be victims of Las Vegas foul play. Mark Sundeen hits Nevada for a freewheeling exploration of dark deeds, a rapidly unfolding apocalypse, and a parched future that will dramatically affect the entire American Southwest.
It鈥檚 not easy being a progressive who works for a middle-of-the-road president. Mark Sundeen sizes up the interior secretary鈥檚 first year in office鈥攚hich has been a disappointment to climate-change activists鈥攁nd decides she鈥檚 most likely to make a mark through a historic reckoning over the U.S. government鈥檚 shameful running of Native American boarding schools.
What I learned about love, loss, and landscape over two decades of living in a 1961 Artcraft mobile home in the Utah desert
In the spell of a week, a mysterious monolith appeared in the Utah desert and was subsequently removed by some slackline bros. The saga has raised more questions than answers.
As red-rock meccas like Moab, Zion, and Arches become overrun with visitors, our writer wonders if Utah's celebrated Mighty Five ad campaign worked too well鈥攁nd who gets to decide when a destination is "at capacity."
On a plane ride over the Mountain West, a grieving father retraces his adventurous youth and searches for solace in the rugged landscapes that molded him
Golf courses! Water parks! Man-made lakes! If Utah has its way, the retiree oasis of St. George will explode with growth, turning red rock to bluegrass and slaking its thirst with a new billion-dollar pipeline from the Colorado River.
A swanky night out with the mutts saving our veterans' lives
Nowhere is the quest for simplicity and freedom more pronounced than in the tiny-house movement, which has grown from hipster alternative to mainstream phenomenon faster than an Amish barn raising. Mark Sundeen joins the believers to ask: Has the dream gotten too big?
The decision by the Army Corps of Engineers to block the Dakota Access Pipeline arrived just as internal tensions threatened to fracture Standing Rock's Oceti Sakowin camp
Two impassioned mass protests: one led by white people with guns, the other by nonviolent Native Americans. Taken together, they shed light on the centuries-old myth of the valiant cowboy and savage Indian鈥攁nd on white privilege and institutional racism in America.
Two of our country's biggest issues, racism and climate change, have collided on a North Dakota reservation. This week, I loaded up my station wagon with water and supplies and drove down for a look at a historic demonstration that could shape the national dialogue going forward.
Cheryl Strayed's memoir of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, Wild, offers a refreshing take on outdoor writing by reminding us that a journey through the wilderness can help in overcoming the most wretched of conditions
He was a proud Marine who survived three 颅brutal tours in Iraq and had plans to redeploy with the 颅national guard. But when 30-year-old Noah 颅Pippin 颅vanished inside Montana鈥檚 remote Bob 颅Marshall 颅Wilderness, he left behind a trail of haunting secrets鈥攁nd a mystery that may never be solved.
Their fathers were titans. Their family defined conservation in the West. Now, with two Senate seats up for grabs, cousins Mark and Tom Udall have the chance to bring green leadership to Washington when it's needed most. Can the boys man up the way their dads did a generation ago?
Fall in Yakutat, Alaska, means camouflage, salmon, and the sweetest swells on the far north shore
With "the death of environmentalism" being debated across the land—and with the mainstream movement under siege from without and within—it's time to meet the winning side in America's new green wars. Here they come, ready or not: the 20 most powerful voices leading the environmental counterrevolution.
Step right up, ladies and gentlemen! Thar she... might blow! When Mount St. Helens, America's very own all-natural weapon of mass destruction, threatened to go postal again, 24 years after her last tantrum, disaster groupies rushed to the crater—and hoped for the worst.
The Dolores used to be one of the mightiest whitewater rivers in the West. Then politics and dry weather got in the way. But neither drought nor dam nor partisan bickering can stop Mark Sundeen from floating (and walking and driving) the entire course of the Rio de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores.