My love for the outdoors extends naturally to a love for encountering wildlife in their natural habitat. This feature for National Geographic Traveler won the Travelers’ Tales Solas Award for Best Adventure Travel Story. It was also cited by the judges when I was named the Lowell Thomas Silver Travel Journalist of the Year.

“Bob Howells does not just write about nature—he becomes one with it. In fact, if you are not careful, you will find yourself transported into a remote and vast landscape or seascape. And he knows just how to hook you along. In ‘Called to the Wild,’ written for National Geographic Traveler, Howells does just that.”

Excerpt:

How I came to be snorkeling in Hudson Bay not far from 3,000-pound beluga whales is the story of a growing obsession. Over the past few years, I’ve watched humpback whales feed off the British Columbia coast, hovered offshore in a kayak while grizzly bears munched on tender late-spring grass, cast a flashlight beam on skulking caimans (crocodile cousins) from a canoe in the Amazon, watched elk rut on a Banff golf course, and tiptoed through a herd of wild bison on an Oklahoma prairie.

In a world teeming with virtual adventures, encountering wildlife in their natural settings is a refreshing dose of reality. Increasingly, it’s what I seek in my travels. When I can hear the splashing crescendo of a whale’s breach, smell the pungent muskiness of a herd of elk, or catch the glint of a gator’s eye, I know that a bit of the real world endures. I like being reminded that separation from the natural world is an illusion. Indeed, here I am, as alive and breathing as the creatures I’m watching.

Or the creatures watching me.

READ THE FEATURE (Download pdf)