Joshua Zaffos is a freelance journalist in Fort Collins who has worked as a staff writer and editor for several independent weeklies in northern Colorado. He frequently covers the environment, science, politics, and whatever else floats his boat. He has written for High Country News, Orion, Grist, Fly Fisherman, 5280.com, Earth Magazine, and a number of other print and online publications. He is currently the Green Business columnist for the Northern Colorado Business Report. Zaffos holds a master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and he received his bachelor’s degree from Emory University in Atlanta. When not out in the field with a pad or in front of a computer, Zaffos is a camping fiend and a napping aficionado.
In the Beginning
Zaffos was born deep in the feral suburbs of New Jersey, somewhere between Springsteen Country and Bon Jovi Hollow. At an early age, he displayed an affinity for pancakes, Popeye cartoons, baseball, apple juice, electric trains and Dukes of Hazzard Wrist Racers.
He was active in elementary-school theater, starring in productions of the phonetic Western, “Grammar Gulch,” and a politically taut performance of Disney’s “The Trial of Alice in Wonderland,” in which he portrayed the White Rabbit. During the same era, Zaffos was a charter member of The Bumsketeers, a suburban hip-hop ensemble that burned too bright too fast.
Favorite reads at a young age included Judy Blume’s works, Einstein Anderson books, Indiana Jones-themed choose-your-own adventure novels, and the Sweet Pickles series, among others esteemed texts and comic books.
On a brisk Saturday morning in January 1989, Zaffos became a man.
With the onset of high school, Zaffos was a member of several bands, most notably The Gootch. He pulled off his first Freudian slip during a sophomore-year classroom recital of Julius Caesar, a misspoken line to a character otherwise known as Clitius. For two years, Zaffos held the highly coveted position of class vice president, before becoming school vice president in his senior year. He re-discovered Orwell, discovered Vonnegut, Emerson, Mary Shelley, and Swift, and slogged through at least eight Shakespeare plays and Milton — with thanks to his junior- and senior-year English teacher. Before graduation, classmates voted Zaffos “Most Likely to Succeed,” which, in retrospect, seems like a curious choice by the student body.
All Growns Up
Unable to decide between joining the Army or Phish tour, he opted to go to college at Emory University, where he pursued his bachelor’s degree, and first honed his skills at facial-hair cultivation, rural mind alteration, boiled-peanut consumption, and backpacking. During the 1996 Summer Olympics, Zaffos played a critical role in providing water for boxers and French fries for boxing fans. He read lots of Hemingway and Hesse, then Camus and Nabokov, and reveled in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
Zaffos spent a formative Fall semester in Sevilla, Spain, where he became a scholar of the Spanish Civil War and Cruzcampo. Upon returning to Atlanta, he became an intern for the Georgia Wildlife Federation and, later, the local Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Away from his scholastic pursuits, he was a twice-weekly disciple of DJ Romeo Cologne and original attendee to the notorious Funk Parties. Zaffos graduated in 1998 with a degree in Political Science and Human & Natural Ecology and a minor in Spanish. His senior thesis focused on the environmental movement in Spain.
After dabbling in Georgia politics and environmental education, Zaffos took the next logical step of stealing away to a backwoods cabin in eastern Idaho, on the wild edge of Yellowstone National Park, where he led the occasional wildflower and geology tour and chatted up tourists at a cattle ranch/ nature preserve. McPhee, Stegner and Abbey became literary staples. The experience and the following year between Montana (um, libertarian think-tank) and Idaho (more idyllic conservation work) imparted him with the ability to drive a manual transmission regardless of the function of the first two gears, the desire to fly fish, and a lust for creek-stomping moose, mountain lakes and Olympia beer.
Zaffos returned to the academic realm in Fall 2000, pursuing a master’s degree at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. In two years, he focused on conservation policy and stream restoration, and also took several courses in forest management. His summer project brought him to Billings, Montana, studying the Yellowstone River. A second major master’s project involved assisting in the design of a fishway on a small Connecticut stream that enables small fish to swim past a dam. Upon graduation, Zaffos participated with two dozen classmates in the school’s field excursion through Germany, Austria and Slovenia, touring parks, forests and working woodlands and a few bars, too.
Stay tuned…
