From the time she was eight years old, Carter G. Walker made annual family trips out west to a Wyoming dude ranch, where she fell in love with purple mountain majesties and all things equine. When she graduated early with an English literature degree from Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, Carter landed, sight unseen, in Bozeman, Montana and made the West her home. In her two decades as a Westerner, Carter has stoked the flames of her love affair by balancing her intellectual need to tell stories with her physical yearning to explore and appreciate wild places. She has worked as a wilderness guide in Montana and Wyoming; as a naturalist guide in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks; as a wildland and structure firefighter and EMT; and as a publisher, editor, and freelance writer. She is currently the managing editor of Western Art & Architecture and a contributing editor to Big Sky Journal. She continues to travel the backroads and little-known parts of the West as fodder for countless magazine features and food for her soul. In 2002, after a ski trip to the North Pole was unexpectedly (but brilliantly!) re-routed through the archipelago of Svalbard, Carter met and married Bjorn Soteren, an absolute Viking and her hero when it came to the pursuit of adventure. The couple live with their two young daughters, Sissel and Siri--both champion road warriors and cowgirls at heart--in Bozeman, Montana.
