Distractions

As this issue arrives in your mailbox, winter weather has determined when, how and where we get outside. Whipsawing between blue skies and fresh snow to a three-day thaw that leaves trails icy and treacherous, some days it is safer to stay inside and read a book.

The 2025 National Outdoor Book Awards is a great place to build your reading list. The 29-year-old organization selected 17 books as winners in 2025. Awards were presented in ten categories ranging from outdoor literature to children’s books. Here is a partial list of winners.

As this issue arrives in your mailbox, winter weather has determined when, how, and where we get outside. Whipsawing between blue skies and fresh snow to a three-day thaw that leaves trails icy and treacherous, some days it is safer to stay inside and read a book.

The 2025 National Outdoor Book Awards is a great place to build your reading list. The 29-year-old organization selected 17 books as winners in 2025. Awards were presented in ten categories ranging from outdoor literature to children’s books. Here is a partial list of winners.

Outdoor Literature Category

The winner of the Outdoor Literature category is “A Marriage at Sea” by Sophie Elmhirst. Elmhirst recounts the true story of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey’s attempt to survive the open Pacific after their sailboat sank. Their life raft was four-and-a-half feet in diameter, barely enough room for them to sit, much less sleep. They had no radio. The days passed into weeks. Weeks passed into months. To survive, they needed all of what little resources they had - and they needed one another. Recounted in crystal-clear clarity, “A Marriage at Sea” is storytelling perfection.

History/Biography Category

The History Biography category has two winners. One is “A Woman Among Wolves,” an autobiography by Diane Boyd chronicling her life as a wildlife biologist. Often alone in remote northern Montana, she encounters cougars, grizzly bears, and, of course, wolves. Through her stories and experiences, we learn much about wolves, their behavior, and the controversies swirling around their reintroduction in the West.

“The White Ladder” by Daniel Light is the other winner in the History/Biography category. In this sweeping, exceedingly readable history of mountaineering, Light covers events and personalities from ancient history through the 1920s, when the British set their sights on Everest. What keeps the book moving is the rivalry among climbers to ascend ever-higher mountains. By the end of the book, the highest, Mt. Everest, remains unclimbed – or has it? Find out more in this excellent work of scholarship and the exploration of the heights.

Natural History Literature Category

Receiving top honors in the Natural History Category is “Born of Fire and Rain” by M. L. Herring. Herring takes the reader on a series of trips into the Pacific Coastal Forest, a densely timbered stretch of land on the western edge of Oregon and Washington. The book is passionate, at times poetic, in which natural history, art, and care for the natural environment converge elegantly.

Design and Artistic Merit

The judges loved “Smithsonian Trees of North America.” Written by W. John Kress, it is the winner of the Design and Artistic Merit category. The book has over 800 pages of authoritative information, supplemented by several thousand photographs. The book is so well designed, so well written and organized, that anyone can benefit from it, whether you have a passing interest in trees or an advanced degree in botany.

Outdoor Adventure Guides

There’s nothing like sitting around with your legs propped up, enjoying the warmth of a fire in a wood stove. But before using the stove, there’s always the matter of getting wood for it. That’s where Nicole Coenen’s Axe in Hand comes in handy. She covers everything you could possibly ever need to know about chopping wood: selecting an axe for the job, sharpening it, replacing handles, reading the wood before splitting, dealing with stuck axes, and more. Coenen has it wired, having done loads of chopping, including belonging to a group that bucked and split wood to help generate funds for needy organizations. Whether you’re an experienced chopper or just getting started, you can’t go wrong with this excellent guide.

Complete reviews of these and the other 2025 winners may be found at the National Outdoor Book Awards website at www.noba-web.org.

NOTE: The editor of Silent Sports has served as a judge for the National Outdoor Book Awards since 2019.