Dana Meise is a Canada-based journalist for The Great Trail Magazine, specializing in outdoor conservation, endurance travel, and community-led ecology. With a 15-year career bridging forestry and journalism, his work emphasizes sustainable engagement with natural spaces.
“The trail isn’t a path—it’s a conversation with the land.”
For media inquiries, reference his author profile and recent work on generational shifts in outdoor culture.
Dana Meise is a Canadian outdoors journalist whose work intertwines personal adventure with environmental advocacy. Best known as the first person to hike the entire 24,000 km Trans Canada Trail, his writing for The Great Trail Magazine blends firsthand exploration with insights into conservation and community impact. With a career spanning forestry, endurance hiking, and storytelling, Meise has become a authoritative voice on Canada’s natural landscapes.
This foundational piece details Meise’s philosophy of “slow exploration,” emphasizing the cultural and ecological threads connecting Canada’s trails. He critiques rushed tourism, advocating for immersive travel that supports local economies. The article’s grassroots tone—highlighting encounters with Indigenous communities and small-town stakeholders—established Meise’s narrative style: empathetic yet data-driven.
Written mid-journey, this dispatch from Alberta’s Bow Valley examines climate change impacts on glacial trails. Meise combines temperature data from 1970–2013 with observations of receding ice fields, framing environmental shifts through accessible storytelling. The article spurred dialogue among policymakers about trail rerouting and carbon-neutral maintenance practices.
Profiling hikers Sonja Richmond and Sean Morton, Meise analyzes the growing appeal of thru-hiking among millennials. He contrasts their gear-light approach with commercialized expeditions, underscoring demographic shifts in outdoor participation. The piece remains a benchmark for understanding generational trends in adventure tourism.
Meise prioritizes stories where local initiatives revive or protect trails. For example, his 2013 coverage of Alberta’s volunteer-led trail restoration demonstrates his interest in scalable solutions. Pitches should emphasize partnerships between municipalities, Indigenous groups, and NGOs, avoiding top-down policy angles.
Articles like The Great Hike showcase intergenerational knowledge transfer, such as elders teaching sustainable foraging. Successful pitches might explore mentorship programs or family-led conservation efforts, particularly those bridging urban and rural communities.
Meise seldom covers luxury eco-tourism or gear reviews. His 2018 ExplorersWeb piece critiques influencer-driven expeditions, favoring grassroots journeys. Pitches about corporate sponsorships or product-centric stories will likely miss the mark.
Meise’s 10-year trek earned recognition from the Trans Canada Trail Foundation and Canadian Geographic. This achievement solidified his credibility as both an explorer and documentarian, unique in a field dominated by either athletes or writers.
As a contributor to the Kettle Valley Express guidebook, Meise helped earn a silver Summit MEA for promoting regional tourism. The award highlights his ability to align storytelling with economic outcomes—a rarity in outdoor journalism.
At PressContact, we aim to help you discover the most relevant journalists for your PR efforts. If you're looking to pitch to more journalists who write on Outdoors, here are some other real estate journalist profiles you may find relevant:
