Draft:David Petersen (American author)

David Petersen was born May 18, 1946 in Oklahoma City, OK. He is a critically acclaimed American author—a naturalist-storyteller—who loves writing, especially about nature and humanity’s relationship to nature. His books and other writings explore and celebrate wildlife and wild places. Petersen was an officer and helicopter pilot in the U.S. Marines, rank of captain; earned a B.S. in social sciences and a B.A. in creative writing; was a professional conservationist for much of his life; was managing editor of the national motorcycle magazine Road Rider; was a visiting professor of English at Fort Lewis College in Durango; was Western editor for Mother Earth News; and was a contributing editor to Backpacker Magazine. Since 1980, David has lived a simple lifestyle in a small self-built cabin in the San Juan Mountains, near Durango, CO. His wife of 36 years, Carolyn, died in 2014. David and Carolyn were the subjects of the documentary film On the Wild Edge: Hunting for a Natural Life, by Belgian filmmaker Christopher Daley.^[1]

LOVE OF WRITING Although he is best known for helping to pioneer a genre of hunters who write critically about hunting, he never set out to be a “hunting writer,” and that’s not how he wants to be remembered. Hunting, and writing about ethical hunting, ended up being a large part of his life, but that was never his goal. In fact, the first 11 books he wrote and/or edited had nothing, or very little, to do with hunting. Among the things he is most proud of is having worked with two of his literary heroes, Edward Abbey and A. B. Guthrie, Jr. After Abbey died, the task of editing his journals, correspondence, and poems went to Petersen (see below: Books – Edited). Petersen’s collection of 23 of Guthrie’s environmental essays, done in collaboration with Guthrie, is titled Big Sky, Fair Land, and in it, Petersen not only introduces the essays, but delineates the events and dynamics that influenced Guthrie’s staunch and thoughtful conservation ethic, which he hoped would become a mature and far-sighted national conservation conscience.

John Nichols (author of The Milagro Beanfield War), wrote of Petersen: “His work transcends science and even literature: It is a polemic for survival.… More than any other author I have read, David Petersen can explain a hunter’s heart and the need for a renewed acceptance of this heart if the human community, based on healthy natural resources, is to survive.”^[2]

LOVE OF NATURE According to the Colorado Wildlife Federation, Petersen is “one of the state’s most effective and dedicated wildlife conservationists…. Dave is the living embodiment of an effective wildlife and public lands advocate. His hard and effective work … helped immensely to protect the state’s roadless areas”^[3]. One of the many things he has devoted himself to ameliorating is the proliferation and misuse of all-terrain vehicles across much of the West’s important habitats. Consistent with this advocacy, Petersen founded the Colorado chapter of the national sportsman’s conservation group Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, was Colorado Public Lands Conservation Field Director for Trout Unlimited, and served on the Colorado Governor’s Roadless Areas Review Task Force in support of protecting key wildlife habitat. ^[4]

ETHICAL, SPIRITUAL HUNTING Petersen is also a traditional bowhunter (i.e., he hunts with a longbow – just “a stick and a string”) whose books related to hunting and conservation have formed the ethical foundation of not only organizations such as Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, but also of countless hunters who strive to hunt in a reverent manner that connects them to their prey, to Nature, and to their own deepest selves. An iconoclast to many if not most hunters, he is considered by many to be an “anti-hunter” even though he has quite literally lived to hunt and has hunted to live. According to Carol Peace Robins ^[5]: Petersen “disdains [most] hunters and ranchers and decries sheep for ‘tempting hungry predators with their insipid nonstop bleating.’”

David Petersen’s works have delved deeply into the ethics of hunting and how humans evolved as hunter-gatherers, and the implications of that fact for who we are today and how we should relate to Nature. Along with his extensive personal experience, Petersen draws from philosophy, evolutionary science, ecology, biology, literature and other fields to create works that offer a unique look at hunting, hunters, and anti-hunters. A theme that reverberates throughout his many books is that “not all hunting is the same, and not all hunters are the same…. Ethical hunting is predicated on dignity and respect: Dignity in our private thoughts and public words as well as in our actions afield when, as hunter Aldo Leopold pointed out, nobody is watching us.”^[6]

Petersen’s books require hunters to take a hard, honest look at themselves and how they hunt; they also suggest how those who are often opposed to each other—ethical hunters, wilderness advocates, and wildlife defenders—can and should be allies against their common enemy: unethical hunters and those responsible for the loss of wildlife habitat. He praises the virtues of ethical hunting while condemning the sins of unethical hunters.

Authored:

Among the Elk: Wilderness Images, photographs by Alan Carey, Northland Publishing (Flagstaff, AZ), 1988. Wind, Water, and Sand: The Natural Bridges Story, Canyonlands Natural History Association (Moab, UT), 1990. Among the Aspen: Life in an Aspen Grove, photographs by Branson Reynolds, Northland Publishing (Flagstaff, AZ), 1991. Racks: The Natural History of Antlers and the Animals That Wear Them, Capra Press (Santa Barbara, CA), 1991. Ghost Grizzlies: Does the Great Bear Still Haunt Colorado? Holt (New York, NY), 1995. The Nearby Faraway: A Personal Journey through the Heart of the West, Johnson Books (Boulder, CO), 1997. Elkheart: A Personal Tribute to Wapiti and Their World, Johnson Books (Boulder, CO), 1998. Heartsblood: Hunting, Spirituality, and Wildness in America, Island Press (Washington, DC), 2000. Writing Naturally: A Down to Earth Guide to Nature Writing, Johnson Books (Boulder, CO), 2001. Cedar Mesa: A Place Where Spirits Dwell, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 2002. On the Wild Edge: In Search of a Natural Life, Henry Holt & Company (New York, NY), 2005.

Edited:

Big Sky, Fair Land: The Environmental Essays of A. B. Guthrie, Jr., Northland Publishing (Flagstaff, AZ), 1988. Earth Apples: The Poetry of Edward Abbey, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1994. A Hunter's Heart: Honest Essays on Blood Sport, Holt (New York, NY), 1996. Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1994, revised edition, Johnson Books (Boulder, CO), 2003. Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast, Mildweed Editions (Minneapolis, MN), 2006. Petersen also published hundreds of articles and essays in a wide variety of magazines, journals, and anthologies.

Honors and Awards 2011 Colorado Wildlife Federation: Sportsman Conservationist of the Year. 2012 Colorado Wildlife Council: Lifetime Achievement Award. 2013 Backcountry Hunters and Anglers: Chairman Mike Beagle Award for Outstanding Service “above and beyond in promoting BHA and its core values.”

Documentary Christopher Daley, 2016, “On the Wild Edge: Hunting for a Natural Life.” Available on Youtube

On the Wild Edge: Hunting for a Natural Life. C. Daley, 2016. Available on Youtube

Bloomsbury Review, May-June, 2001, John Nichols, "A Memory in Nature: Writing the Wild Country: A Profile of David Petersen," pp. 3-6.

New York Times Book Review, November 12, 1995, Carol Peace Robins, review of Ghost Grizzlies, p. 56.

The Sun, December 2009, Jeremy Lloyd, The Good Hunter: David Petersen on the Ethics of Killing Animals for Food.

A very detailed entry on David Petersen is available at https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/petersen-david-1946

An excellent, in-depth interview with David Petersen is included in The Sun, December 2009, by Jeremy Lloyd, under the title “The Good Hunter: David Petersen on the Ethics of Killing Animals for Food.”