This month at the RolfPotts.com Writers page, I interview Outside Magazine adventure travel columnist Mark Jenkins, who has written three award-winning books: The Hard Way, To Timbuktu and Off the Map.

Jenkins’ foray into writing started after he graduated college with a philosophy degree, “only to realize that I was a couple thousand years too late and that Aristotle was the last person to actually make a living off the stuff.” From there, he moved into a 12′ x 12′ cabin set at 10,000 feet in the snowdrifts of the Medicine Bow Mountains of Wyoming with his girlfriend and a typewriter. He started to write, and eventually sold a story about map and compass use. “I’m still trying to find my way,” he quips.

As with many of the writers I’ve interviewed, Jenkins has had to work plenty of day jobs to augment his writing income. “It took me years to make something more than a PBJ-and-sardines living from nailing sentences together,” he says. “As a youth I did all the classic Western jobs. I worked on ranches, I worked on the railroad — three times, once as a gandy dancer — worked on oil rigs, worked construction. Later I worked ten hours a day as a steeplejack or tinner (a guy who puts in heating ducts), and wrote stories at night and on weekends. I still consider myself extremely fortunate to make a full-time living from writing.”

Full Mark Jenkins interview online here.