Welcome! Here are some useful links!
FAQs + Useful Information:
Hello there stranger,
I’m Maddy. Here I am, on an island in British Columbia 10 days out from my most recent shower. I’m a wilderness guide turned indie writer/freelance photographer. Right now, I'm exploring the beautiful and wild spaces in the American Midwest.
I’m committed to making the outdoors more accessible, whether through hands-on in-person kayak guiding or through creating outdoor resources to demystify our place in the wilderness.
Toss your email below to hear outdoor & travel stories from me, and other small travel writers all over the world!
Hello Stranger is a newsletter & publication dedicated to telling real, unpolished, outdoors stories.
In 2018, I started a blog called Hello Stranger. I was a senior in college and it was part of a class project (actually, it still exists, have a laugh!). It was not very good.
But someone had told me the best way to get good at something is just to start, and I wanted to be a travel writer, so I just started.
It wasn’t until March 2019-2020 when I was serving as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Armenia that I dove into writing, still under the name of Hello Stranger, and wrote an essay every two weeks about my experiences in the Caucuses.
In March 2020 due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I along with 7,600 other PCVs serving abroad were evacuated back to the United States on less than 42 hours notice.
At first when I came back to America it felt like my life had fallen apart and I stopped writing completely— it felt really, really hard. Instead I picked up a camera.
In the time since then, I’ve sea kayaked Isle Royale, joined a National Geographic expedition in the Apostle Islands, spent 70 days paddling British Columbia, worked in an elementary school, quit working in school because I couldn’t hack it, went back to sea kayak guiding, worked in a coffee shop, as a sauna attendant, started freelance writing and photography, and altogether floundered and struggled to find my footing as a 20-something who lost their home, job, and whole life overnight.
Eventually I started writing again and with it launched this newest iteration of Hello Stranger, the version you are reading now. Thanks for being here, and for spending a little time on my page❤️
