Walt McLaughlin is an unrepentant woods wanderer and philosopher of wildness who has written extensively about his backcountry experiences in northern New England, New York's Adirondacks and elsewhere. His stories, essays and poems have appeared in Conservationist, Blueline, Vermont Life, and many other periodicals. He has a dozen books in print, including an account of his solo immersion in the Alaskan bush, Arguing With the Wind (Wood Thrush Books, 2010), a narrative about hiking Vermont's Long Trail end-to-end, Forest Under My Fingernails ( Heron Dance Press, 2006), and one about hiking the Northville-Placid Trail through the Adirondacks, The Allure of Deep Woods (North Country Books, 2013). He is also the driving force behind a small press called Wood Thrush Books. Whenever he isn't hiking, writing, publishing, or scratching his head over the nature of things, he hunts down rare, secondhand books and sells them online. He lives in Swanton, Vermont with his wife, Judy.
