Nowhere else had ever made him feel so alive. The problems arose when he realized he had to actually survive in this paradise. After five years of indeed barely surviving, Fine wrote the wildly popular and funny Not Really An Alaskan Mountain Man, a hysterical account of a suburbanite trying to get back to the Earth. Recently, a frostbitten Fine felt himself called to a remote and obscure region of New Mexico wilderness that he had been visiting for a decade. What he heard calling him was a seductive word: "Home." Seductive not least because he might have found the one place in the Lower 48 U.S. States more remote than Alaska. And with fewer polar bears chasing him.

There he is working on his next projects, which, in addition to his unique brand of in-the-field journalism, include a children's book, a short story collection, a novel, and the carnage-filled Not Really An Organic Cowboy. That book documents Fine's attempts to provide his own food, shelter and water on a remote, petroleum-free, off-the-grid ranch. Fine is also working on a documentary film project about relative resource consumption world-wide, an animated documentary about blending his Neolithic and high tech tastes, a performance art piece about American Justice in the 21st Century, and a non-fiction book about his (surprise) carnage-filled attempts to become an Alaskan river guide. Given this line-up, he often speculates on what it is about Southwest New Mexico that nonetheless doesn't make him feel busy.

As a print and radio journalist, Fine has reported from five continents and a dozen countries including Rwanda, Tajikistan, Guatemala and Burma. His print work has appeared everywhere from the Washington Post to U.S. News and World Report to Salon to Outside to Wired, and his radio work appears regularly on National Public Radio, where he is the "Rural Guy" for the Weekend All Things Considered program. For three years he covered the radio news in his hometown of Haines, Alaska, where he won a dozen awards for his reporting and news direction. He met and interviewed Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, hung out with mountain gorillas in Rwanda, covered civil war in Tajikistan, and reported on the advent of wireless Internet access in the Yup'ik Eskimo communities of Western Alaska. And yet he still can barely get a fire started in his wood stove. And make no mistake: at an elevation of 6,000 feet, in New Mexico he still needs to get that stove lit.

Not Really An Alaskan Mountain Man (Alaska Northwest Books) is in its third printing and was nominated for several literary awards. Fine's adventure writing has also been anthologized in two books, In Search of Adventure and Travelers Tales: Central America.

Doug Fine's multimedia speaking engagements are getting rave reviews nationwide. They are side-splittingly funny yet relevant presentations about wild lifestyle change, resource use, pushing personal and group boundaries to higher level of achievement, and conservation. Think Spalding Gray meets Inspector Clouseau and Bill Bryson. He speaks to corporations, universities, and non-profits like the National Geographic Society. The gist of the talks center around the fact that if a regular guy like Fine can achieve his wildest dreams, anyone can. For Fine, these dreams include living in a healthy ecosystem, being in touch with his emotions (AKA Keepin' It Real), reducing the use of fossil fuels, and making contact with other conscious beings in the cosmos.