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Bio: Paul McHugh

            I was born in South Florida, in the fall of 1950, during the onslaught of Hurricane King. Our family story is that my mom broke her water and started having contractions right when the storm arrived - which was about a month early, for her. Exceptionally low atmospheric pressure of a hurricane, apparently, can sometimes induce labor. My father piled limestone rocks into the back of a World War II jeep to help it stay on the road amid the strong, gusting winds, and drove us down to the James Archer Smith hospital. My mom told me later she almost delivered me on the front steps, and was reproved by a grouchy old nurse who met her at the front door: “You certainly waited long enough!”

            After growing up in the ‘Glades, on the reefs, and in a small farming community, I went on to attend St. John Vianney seminary, at ages 13-19, in order to prepare to become a Roman Catholic priest. Nearing 20, I had accumulated enough evidence to determine that I and the priesthood weren’t a good fit, and I went to finish up my formal education with a bachelor’s degree (summa cum laude, I’m vain enough to tell you), in English, with an emphasis on poetry, and a minor in psychology, from FSU in 1972.

            A year after graduation, I rode my “putt” (a sand-cast Honda 750 modified by a Hooker header and Yoshimura cam, a bike named Franklin Delano Motorcycle) across the United States, looking for the place where I wanted to live. That turned out to be Northern California. This was also the place where I ran out of money. So, I took up a variety of jobs – including, but not limited to: fair barker, archery instructor, catering truck driver, masseur and union carpenter – while I wrote my first novel (a bildungsroman), “The Search for Goodbye to Rains” (published by Island Press in 1980).

            After I moved up to the Mendocino village region (settling in Albion first), I launched a career as a freelance writer and independent video producer, focusing on the topics of resource use, environmental issues, and outdoor sports. From 1975 to 1985, I published magazine and newspaper features in a variety of journals, and made documentaries for PBS. I also did a lot of community theatre, including a one-man show of Lord Buckley-type schticks.

            I further expanded my repertoire of sports I had grown up with (fishing, hiking, sailing, skin diving) to include the West Coast pursuits of rock climbing, ski mountaineering, bow hunting, mountain biking, whitewater kayaking, sea kayak racing and surfing. Then in 1985, I was hired to be the main feature writer for the Outdoors section of the San Francisco Chronicle, a post I have held until 2007. A non-fiction book, “Wild Places,” was published by Foghorn Books in 1996.

            In that fabulous role as outdoor writer for the Chronicle, I was able to undertake numerous adventures and explorations. Probably the single most striking project I did for the paper was my sea kayak trip, with two companions (John Weed and Bo Barnes) from the Winchuck River in Oregon to San Francisco Bay, in fall of 2005. That was chronicled in 36 print stories (in the paper and online), four podcasts and five videocasts, all available for viewing at www.sfgate.com/northcoast.

            And now, in 2007 and onward? We’ll see. This Web site will likely prove a major venue for distributing what I have to say to you folks out there in many of the days that lie ahead for all of us.

            Thanks for joining me here.