Kim O'Connell atop Old Rag in Shenandoah National Park.

Editor's note: National Parks Traveler has operated with only one full-time staffer since its inception, but has a core team of freelance writers, photographers, broadcasters, and sound recording engineers that are relied upon heavily to provide content. They're being introduced to you in a series of short profiles.

Kim O'Connell

Contributing writer from Arlington, Virginia. Kim writes about nature, history, and life. Her writing appears in numerous national and regional publications on topics ranging from American history to landscape architecture to conservation and sustainability to parenting. She has served as an artist in residence at both Shenandoah National Park and Acadia National Park, where she researched astronomy tourism and the ways parks are regenerative for plants, animals, and people. 

“Go to” park: Shenandoah

Favorite outdoor activity in the parks: Hiking and nature journaling/painting

What the National Parks Traveler means to you: I was driving across Yellowstone National Park in 2014 when the stunning beauty of the landscape crystallized something for me: I realized that I needed to make national parks a bigger part of my life, both as a visitor and as a creative person. When I started writing for National Parks Traveler, I was thrilled to have found a publication that was committed to telling the myriad stories of our national park system. And not just stories of the big, beautiful, iconic natural parks and also the small, lesser-known stories too.

With the Traveler, I’ve had the privilege of covering important conservation stories such as oil and gas exploration at Big Cypress National Preserve, endangered species protection at Zion National Park, and heritage tourism around the Chesapeake Bay, and I’ve even written a couple stories about park issues internationally. Our national parks are places of refuge, for us and for plants and animals. The Traveler is committed to not only telling readers about these special places, but also protecting them for this and future generations. We do this both by celebrating park success stories and promoting park travel opportunities, but also by holding decision-makers’ feet to the fire when that’s called for. As a mother of two children, this is important to me. As a contributing writer for the Traveler, I get to feel good about what I’m writing about and contribute to the publication’s mission to make a difference for the planet.