In 1990, Dan Oko was a recent college graduate living in Seattle with dual degrees in Creative Writing and Philosophy. Environmental debates were blowing up in Washington state with battles over spotted owls and old-growth forests, challenges to urban development, and a new proposal to bring grizzly bears back to the North Cascades.
“I was bartending nights, mountain biking, skiing, backpacking, and reading Edward Abbey,” says Dan. That’s when he got a call. A band of merry pranksters who had sold their stake in a start-up humor rag called The Onion needed reporters and critics for their new alt-weekly The Stranger. “I found I could combine my passions in the pages of this irreverent weekly newspaper,” says Dan.
Later, he decamped for Missoula, Montana, where he joined the college town’s feisty weekly Missoula Independent. The job provided a crash course in beat reporting—and led to a fly-fishing addiction. After notching bylines in leading outdoor magazines such as Outside and Men’s Journal, as well as conservation-associated publications Trout and Audubon, Dan decided to hang out his freelance shingle. In the years since, his career has carried him across the Himalayas in Bhutan and India, the Australian Outback, the Italian Dolomites, Cuba, and adventure outposts throughout the United States.
Today, Dan calls Texas home and contributes to various outlets, works on book projects, and writes for nonprofits like the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation and Colorado River Land Trust. A Hence Journal contributor, Dan’s recent work has appeared in Adventure Journal, Texas Monthly, and AAA Explorer. Based in pancake flat Houston, Dan still considers himself a mountain guy. He and his wife have also raised their teenage daughter, an expert skier, avid surfer, and hunter, to embrace the wild. “I really like what Mike Rogge at Mountain Gazette recently told me,” says Dan. “You don’t have to live in the mountains to live a mountain lifestyle.”
