Writings

The volcanic peaks are jagged and foreboding, the surf pounds ferociously, and the trade winds never stop howling.

One writer joins citizen scientists to study an elusive species of Arctic canines.

Over the last 20 years, Colorado’s North Fork Valley has emerged as a model for the New West: Artisanal farms, sustainable wineries, backcountry sports. Then fracking came to town

Businesses scrambling to fix a failed ad campaign, adapt to social media, or improve internal communications are turning to a self-styled scholar of Aristotelian rhetoric.

On May 20, a few minutes before 1 p.m. and a few miles above the Port of Baton Rouge, the towing vessel Crimson Gem was pushing 20 barges loaded with corn into a tight bend on the Mississippi called Wilkinson Point.

After publication of The Whale Warriors, the team making The Cove invited Peter to accompany them to Japan on a clandestine filming of the dolphin-killing inlet. He was outfitted with a helmet cam, and paddled a surfboard into the bloody cove with four others. You can see the segment in the Oscar-winning movie. Below is the story of that trip, which was an assignment for Men’s Journal, and became an afterward to the paperback edition of The Whale Warriors.
Read the original Men’s Journal article in PDF format (here)
Read the New Afterward to The Whale Warriors (here)
Visit The Cove website (here)

Sifting through misreports and chasing new leads, the author pieces together a theory on how Steve Fossett, one of history’s most accomplished aviators, simply disappeared.

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Bush piloting is the stuff of legends: dodging mountains, flying low over treetops, landing on impossibly hemmed-in airstrips — when there’s any strip at all. So what was Peter Heller thinking, signing up to learn in three weeks?

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If you decide to drop out and start surfing full-time, there’s no place like Mexico’s Pacific coast. When Peter Heller heads south and signs on with a tough-as-nails board guru, he discovers a wave-riding scene of world-class barrels, hard-grooving kids, and guardian angels.

It’s the cradle of Shangri-la, and one of the deepest river gorges on earth. It’s a fortress guarding sacred waterfalls, and a cauldron of savage whitewater and unrunnable rapids. In the chill of the Himalayan winter, seven world-class kayakers led a massive expedition into the shadowy realm of Tibet’s Tsangpo River.

He grew up poaching alligators, he sells Cadillacs, and his friends run oil companies. But saving the bayous of Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin is Harold Schoeffler’s number-one deal.

Somewhere at the bottom of the deepest canyon on earth flows the Cotahuasi—a long, roiling ribbon of whitewater, a river so old and dangerous that you never master it, you just surrender to it. And pay respect to its ghosts.

Any time now, the world’s last Communist stronghold will be open for adventure. But for an overzealous kayaker, that’s way too long to wait.

North of Havana is a fantasy world of mangrove-lined cays and green water flashing with tropical fish—perfect sea-kayaking country. But the line between what’s permissible and what’s not in Castro’s kingdom falls in a gray area, and comings and goings by water always mean trouble.