About the Author

With more than 25 years of wilderness travel under her boots and kayak hull-including through-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from northern California to Canada and kayaking solo from Ketchikan, Alaska, to Washington-writer JENNIFER HAHN relies on wild harvesting to keep her pack and kayak light.

She holds a B.S. from Huxley College of Environmental Studies, Western Washington University, and a B.A. in writing and ecology from WWU's Fairhaven College, at which time she studied with Pulitzer-prize author Annie Dillard and worked at Audubon magazine. Jennifer later founded her own kayak and natural history company called Elakah Kayak Expeditions. She has led tours in Washington, Canada, Alaska, Baja Mexico, and the Galapagos.

Her first book Spirited Waters: Soloing South Through The Inside Passage won the Barbara Savage "Miles From Nowhere" award for adventure narrative writing in 2001. In 2003, on behalf of the Washington Commission for the Humanities "Inquiring Mind Lecture Series," she traveled across Washington State speaking and serving up wild edibles for her lecture, "Feasting on Flotsam: Eating Between Tides, Fields, and Forest as Cuisine, Culture, and Ecology." Currently she is an adjunct professor at Western Washington University's Fairhaven College teaching courses on northwest wild food. Her love of foraging inspired her latest titles with Mountaineers Books, Pacific Feast and Pacific Coast Foraging Guide.

Jennifer's favorite foraged lunch is sea urchin, nori seaweed, and "goose tongue" leaves. She lives in Bellingham, Washington with her potter husband, Chris Moench.



Ethnobotanist and photographer MAC SMITH is a kayak guide and naturalist and has been teaching wild harvesting classes for more than 30 years.