Trained as an anthropologist with a degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Michael Engelhard worked for twenty-five years as a wilderness guide and outdoor instructor in Alaska and on the Colorado Plateau. The editor of four anthologies and author of "Ice Bear," a cultural history of the polar bear, he has won three Alaska Press Club Awards, and a Rasmuson Individual Artist Award. Recent books include the National Outdoor Book Award-winning memoir "Arctic Traverse" as well as "What the River Knows: Essays from the Heart of Alaska," and the Grand Canyon essay collection "No Walk in the Park." His writing has also appeared in publications like Outside, Sierra, Backpacker, National Parks, Audubon, Utne Reader, and Times Literary Supplement, with more than a hundred articles in Alaska magazine.