Lee W. Cooper

How to Get to the Wilderness Without a Car was researched and written in the early 1980's while I was between graduate student careers at the University of Washington (M.S., Botany, 1980) and the University of Alaska Fairbanks (PhD., Oceanography, 1987). During that time I traveled around the western US and Canada exploring ways to get to places where backpacking was possible without having to own and/or use a car. I shopped the idea for a book about this topic around to the Mountaineers, Sierra Club Books, Wilderness Press and others without success, so I ended up self-publishing the book and sold it to public libraries and outdoor camping stores, and even overseas to international travelers in France and the UK who might not have the resources to rent cars while traveling in the USA. I sold several thousand books and so it was a modest success although the supremacy of the automobile in American society as a primary form of transportation for most people remains the case. There wasn't much access to the internet at that time, so of course any re-write of this topic should take advantage of this newer form of information exchange. I have gone on to an academic career and most of my writing is based on reporting scientific findings, particularly in the Arctic, and relating to the key topic of the impacts of climate change. My scholar.google.com profile page is at https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zQJsba4AAAAJ&hl=en