For more than three decades, Dan Oko has covered the Great Outdoors. He has written on everything from the origins of skiing buried in modern-day China’s Altai mountains to reporting from the field on conservation challenges in his adopted home state of Texas. He has appeared as a talking head on CBS discussing the health benefits of hiking and biking, and guested on conservation podcasts to talk about his passion for angling and the challenges of raising an outdoor kid in the 21st century. A fan of strong coffee and potent IPAs, Dan prefers meeting clients and sources face-to-face: “As often as not, my work concerns the real world, and there is no substitute for getting outside and getting together with people to get the real story,” he says. An avid backpacker and mountain biker, his bylines still appear regularly in a wide variety of publications, and lately he has expanded into book writing. He currently lives in Houston, Texas, with his wife Tina and their beloved teenage daughter, Ursula.