by Mark Herwig

In the Office

My thoughts are lucid and streaming free, imagining the events of last November on the prairies of west-central Minnesota. I’ve just finished writing a feature for Pheasants Forever magazine. I’m pouring on the color, the things that set our readers on fire about the volunteer work they do for wildlife habitat conservation.

I am happy with what has been put down on (electronic) paper. It’s a mind rush to write creatively, to see the images, feelings, and thoughts of others take shape as a cohesive tale. To celebrate wrapping up this particular “masterpiece,” I crank the volume of a favorite song, “Road to the Faire” by David Arkenstone.

Of course, not all the life of an editor of three national conservation and hunting magazines (combined circulation of 160,000) is such fun. There’s the drudgery of making out freelance payment invoices, doing travel expenses online, dealing with office life and the odd irate reader.

In the Field

The best part of my writing job is hitting the road. As hunters, my springer spaniel and I often chase birds together on vacation and for work. Each fall, the writing life takes me around the country meeting Pheasants and Quail Forever chapter members. I visit their habitat projects and interview the volunteers, cooperating landowners, and biologists from county, state, and federal agencies that help make our habitat projects happen. To date, I’ve visited and hunted 30 states in my 12 years as Pheasants/Quail Forever editor.

I’m on the road for our magazines five to six weeks each year. In the field with our chapters, I hunt, handle my dog, Hunter, and take notes for the story and photos all at the same time. It is vigorous physical and mental exercise.

A typical day afield runs 12 to 15 hours, starting with chapter breakfasts and interviews; then hunting and more interviews and photography; then dinner with our volunteers and more interviews and chitchat until the evening grows late.

This is the job of a lifetime because it is fun and serves a good cause: I can’t tell you how many worn-out crop fields I’ve seen restored to native habitat that are again full of wildlife. These lands now leach clean water instead of silt and chemical-laden muck and are home to deer, waterfowl, pheasants, bobolinks, frogs, red-tailed hawks, mice, and more in a sea of prairie flowers, shrubs, and trees—all put there and protected by a bunch of softhearted, middle-aged men (and increasing numbers of young folks and women) who love the outdoors, gundogs, and the hunting life.

I imagine most of you reading this are not hunters. Most Americans aren’t. Despite that fact, surveys show a large majority of Americans are pro-hunting when the law is followed and species are protected. Why? Most nonhunters realize hunters do more for habitat and wildlife conservation than any other group of people in this country; they accept the realities of life and death on earth.

In the Work

I paid a price to be a writer, working for years in low-paying newspaper jobs and bearing all the economic and social consequences that entailed. I saw many writers give up either out of want or necessity, driven by the demands of marriage, children, and material needs. Some of them regretted not staying the course; some didn’t.

For one, I know the earth is glad I stayed the course. The earth has given me more than I’ve taken, as it should be. I’ve found great satisfaction hearing from readers who, for example, were inspired by one of my stories and set aside 20 acres for wildlife or put thousands of acres in a permanent conservation easement where wildlife can roam as long as the grass grows and the wind blows.

I started writing for the mass media for pay at age 23 while a student at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. I had a word (work)-study job at the college newspaper, the Daily. One of the last assignments I concocted for myself had a big impact on my career choice.

It was 1978, and the paper sent me on a trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota to cover a Jackson Browne concert put on to raise money to help the Dakota tribe resist uranium mining in their revered Black Hills. (The US government paid the Dakota billions of dollars for the Black Hills some years ago. The Dakota refused payment because they want the Hills back–thus the money languishes in a bank.)

Before the trip, I interviewed Browne in person in Minneapolis and later attended his concert in Rapid City, South Dakota. At the concert, I also heard the late Floyd Red Crow Westerman (who later starred in Dances with Wolves) sing his biting, and haunting, commentaries about treatment of Native Americans. Check out his “B.I.A. Blues” if you can find it.

At a tent camp in the Hills, I stood atop a mountain and interviewed a Dakota holy man who asked me to help save Mother Earth. I felt the earth rumble as a hundred or more Dakota marched down a dirt road, some beating drums, all crying out to save the sacred Paha Sapa (Black Hills).

I fell in love with seeing the country and writing about it at that moment and haven’t stopped doing it. I just returned from 11 days of similar adventure in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. As I write this, at age 55, I relish the thought of my next adventure to come, pen and paper in hand, eyes wide open and ears eager to listen.

Mark Herwig, his wife, Terri, and hunting dog, Hunter, reside in White Bear Lake. He also edits the young conservationist magazine and writes a blog, The Nomad, on the Pheasants Forever website.