Michigan native’s latest captures adventures in Alaska
Folks around these parts have been going Up North forever. Author and freelance writer Chris Lundgren took it to another level, and it’s been quite an adventure for the former Oakland County resident.
Lundgren (formerly Chris Forbes) graduated from Seaholm High School in 1983, and after stops in East Lansing, Chicago, Traverse City and Texas, landed in Southcentral Alaska, a land of adventure where “the stakes are higher.”
“After living and working in Texas for a few years, my husband and I jumped at the chance to move to Alaska,” says Lundgren. “We’ve always been into outdoor activities — running, bicycling, kayaking, skiing, camping and so forth. But it’s remote here and the landscape is extreme, so the stakes are higher. Plus we have bears!”
Lundgren, a successful writer who graduated with a degree in English from Michigan State University in 1987, had written two successful books before deciding her third book would focus on adventures in Alaska — the “accidental” kind. Her previous books include “Runner’s World Guide to Running and Pregnancy,” and “Legendary Locals of Chugiak-Eagle River,” a niche book about the area where she lives.
“Accidental Adventures: Alaska, True Tales of Ordinary People Facing Danger intheWilderness” was published in July. Her venture with the book didn’t begin by accident, but it did begin innocently enough.
“Afewyears back I wrote an article formy local paper on a family who had spent two and a half years sailing around the world,” she says.