Christopher Ketcham is the author of This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West, which was short-listed for a National Outdoor Book Award. His articles have appeared in Harper's, The New Republic, National Geographic, and many other magazines and websites.
At MacDowell, he worked on a book proposal about the biodiversity collapse on planet Earth, focusing on the mass bird die-off in North America that has occurred in the last 50 years. As part of research for the book, he spent a lot of time wandering the MacDowell property looking for birds in its fantastic forest canopy of Eastern White Pines, and then fanning out to climb the lovely peaks that surround MacDowell: Mt. Monadnock, Pack Monadnock, Thumb Mountain, Skatutakee, Crotched, and many others.
"The trees of MacDowell," he says, "are towering cathedrals, and alone should be an inspiration for any writer who loves the natural world."
