from John:
I started writing Smoke Signals, a monthly column for the Mountain Gazette. For the most part, my Smoke Signals columns have consisted of truncated versions of long-winded stories I have been telling in bars and around campfires for years. In 2012, I decided to aggregate the original, fulsome versions of 22 of my favorite Smoke Signals stories into book form. From illegally entering a closed area in rural China with a pack full of pot to paddling across a crocodile-infested lake in a leaky Zodiac in the Dominican Republic to crash-landing in a hot-air balloon in the most-redneck part of Appalachia, “Smoke Signals” juxtaposes highly unlikely misadventures with tender tales about losing a beloved dog, about the scars that define people in the High Country and about friendships forged in the most-remote parts of the American West.