Kim McMahill

Adventure means something different to everyone, and each person’s definition of adventure will inevitably evolve over time. Many of the adventures earlier in my life now sound like good opportunities to break a bone, but I am not ready to slow down too much or to quit learning and exploring. This quote by Wilferd Peterson pretty much sums up how I see adventure at this point in my life, and it serves as my New Year’s Resolution for 2024.  “Practice the art of adventure by breaking the chain of routine, renewing your life through reading new books, traveling to new places, making new friends, taking up new hobbies and adopting new viewpoints.”

The word adventure means something different to everyone. To some, adventure may be trying a new restaurant or hairstyle, and to others, true adventure can only be defined by climbing Mount Everest. To me, it is somewhere in the middle. I strive to explore the gamut of adventure through actual experiences and fictional stories of survival drawn from my imagination. I write adventure, suspense, crime fiction, and dystopian novels with two primary goals – to entertain readers and to take them on far-flung escapes across America and around the world . I hope you will join me in 2025 in finding new adventures, between the pages of books and in adventures far and wide.  

Fishing stories have become synonymous with exaggeration. No harm is ever intended, but after countless retelling of the story, it often morphs into something much more interesting and exciting than the original. The two-pound fish that took several minutes to reel in evolves into an eight-pound monster which battled valiantly for hours before succumbing to your superior skill. This is how many of my real-life adventures have infiltrated my action-adventure novels.  I’ve explored numerous Mayan ruins tucked into steamy bug-infested jungles in several countries, yet I’ve always managed to avoid running into looters or ruthless kidnappers; I’ve pondered the current of the Rio Grande, but have suppressed the urge to jump into the churning mud and attempt an illegal border crossing; and I have ridden horseback down a terrifyingly-steep slope in which stopping was not an option as scenes from Man From Snowy River flashed through my mind, all without a single gunshot from a foreign enem...

Sinks Canyon State Park outside Lander, Wyoming is home to an interesting geological feature. The Popo Agie River disappears into a limestone cavern and reemerges a quarter mile down the canyon in a pool filled with trout. Sinks Canyon is also a great place for hiking, biking, camping, mountain climb, fishing, and taking in some spectacular scenery. For more information about this and other Wyoming state parks and sites visit https://wyoparks.wyo.gov/ .

To find adventure close to home, be sure to check out your state-managed parks and sites. Wyoming is blessed with many such places which include a number of reservoirs that are great for recreation, some which showcase spectacular natural resources and geology, and several that preserve fascinating cultural treasures. Legends Rock State Petroglyph site and Medicine Lodge Archeological site both contain amazingly well-preserved rock art. At Legends Rock more than 92 prehistoric petroglyph panels and over 300 petroglyphs cover a 1,000-foot-long near vertical cliff. Medicine Lodge Archeological Site is a prehistoric Native American archeological site where the petroglyphs and pictographs cover the face of a 750-foot-long sandstone bluff. For more information about these and other Wyoming state parks and sites visit https://wyoparks.wyo.gov/ .