For the latest issue of Outside Magazine, I photographed travel, nature, conservation, and science writer David Quammen. Quammen’s 200+ editorial works have appeared in National Geographic, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and for 15 years penned a monthly column “Natural Acts” for Outside Magazine. We met up last fall for a round of golf while he was researching for his 16 book.
“Golf is a concept, like death, seldom contemplated by the young” DQ opens with. Here Quammen touches on the beauty and merit of the game, the obvious irony of an environmentalist taking to the links, the history of golf courses in the landscape, and the lengths that contemporary courses are taking to be environmentally mindful.
On the course we talked about game 7 of the 2019 World Series, our shared love for golf, Bozeman winters, mutual friends at National Geographic, both growing up in the Midwest, and my anxieties of what I may see in my lifetime due to climate change. A version of those anxieties are on display today as we navigate a new world and reality. Quammen also specializes in research on animal to human disease transmission and the author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus, and is currently offering his insights on COVID-19 to NPR, Orion, The New York Times, The Hill, and Scientific American.
