Michelle Nijhuis is the author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, a history of the modern conservation movement. She is a project editor for The Atlantic and a longtime contributing editor of High Country News, and her reporting has appeared in publications including National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine. After 15 years off the electrical grid in western Colorado, she and her family now live in White Salmon, Washington, where she continues to aspire to plain citizenship.