Stephanie Vermillion is a travel journalist and author whose fascination with stargazing led her to seek out even more adventures after the sun sets. Her latest book, 100 Nights of a Lifetime, is filled with suggestions for nocturnal adventures for anyone looking to experience nature from an entirely different perspective.
Stephanie Vermillion is a travel journalist and author whose fascination with stargazing led her to seek out even more adventures after the sun sets. Her latest book, 100 Nights of a Lifetime, is filled with suggestions for nocturnal adventures for anyone looking to experience nature from an entirely different perspective.
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Stephanie Vermillion:
The stars opened my eyes and then the Northern Lights became a gateway. And when I see the Northern Lights, I enter this flow state. And so I've kind of been chasing that awe, that feeling of just pure magic that I've never experienced during the daytime. Not to say daytime is not amazing, but the night is just for me it's next level.
Shelby Stanger:
Stephanie Vermillion is a travel journalist and author whose fascination with stargazing led her to seek out even more adventures after the sun sets. She's written about chasing the Northern Lights, hiking by moonlight and watching rare wildlife that only comes out at night. Her latest book, 100 Nights of a Lifetime, is filled with suggestions for nocturnal adventures for anyone looking to experience nature from an entirely different perspective.
I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op Mastercard.
Most people don't quit their day jobs to go stargazing and exploring in the dark, but in 2018, Stephanie Vermillion traded in a cubicle for life as an adventure writer. In many ways, Stephanie's story is similar to mine. She spent years in public relations before making the leap to full-time freelance journalism. It took a lot of learning, practicing and rejection, but eventually it paid off. These days, Stephanie contributes to publications like National Geographic, Vogue, Outside Magazine and more.
Stephanie Vermillion, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. I'm excited to talk about adventuring at night.
Stephanie Vermillion:
It's my favorite topic. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Shelby Stanger:
So I love your story because you quit your job to become an adventure journalist, which obviously is one of my favorite wild ideas ever. What about travel writing? When you were a kid, did you travel a lot? Were you outdoorsy?
Stephanie Vermillion:
So my family, they were very into travel and I think it's such a testament, especially for parents, which I'm not a parent yet, but what you can inspire your children to be. So my mom met my dad and two days later she left on and around the world trip for six weeks with her best friend. And so I think my dad, who was also a traveler himself, was like, wow. And then my dad has these wild stories. So he grew up in Lima, Ohio, like cornfield of America, where him going away to college was kind of a, oh my gosh. But he just wanted to live a little bit differently. So he went on these trips where he'd go on safari, he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in the '70s. My mom and dad went on honeymoon instead of to a beach. They were on a journey to reach Timbuktu, which involved a 48-hour train ride with no food except for Life Savers.
So I grew up with these stories of what life could be, but then I think society kind of told me, well, you get a nine to five job and you save your money and then you have fun when you retire. But the more I looked back on my mom and dad's lives, the more I was like, well, I want a life that's full of stories. I want a life that I'm living for experiences, for memories. And that's what this whole travel writing job has kind of been for me. When you talk about business, people think about money. But for me, the biggest currency really is experiences, that's what I'm after, and I think that really stems from what I was taught as a child that life could be.
Shelby Stanger:
What were you doing for work before you became a travel writer?
Stephanie Vermillion:
I think similar to your story, I was working in public relations for six years for an agency that in toy PR. So I was working on Play-Doh, Monopoly, Scrabble, really fun brands. So it's not that the job wasn't fun, it's just that I was in an office for the majority of my awake hours and I only had 10 vacation days, and I knew that life is more than 10 vacation days. So that was kind of where the rub was.
So halfway through that, my now husband and I moved to the New York City area from Cincinnati, Ohio, and I think that's such a testament to how a change of location can change your entire life. We moved to New York City. I started going to travel meetups just to make friends, and all of a sudden I met people who were travel writers, photographers, travel bloggers, and making a living off of it. I was like, hold up. Why did no one tell me that was possible? For three years, I just started a side hustle on the side of my job and started writing, pitching. I did wedding videography, all of this work to try to just build a life where I could travel the world and experience everything the planet has to offer.
And so by 2018, I've decided to make a break and go for it. So quit my job. Two days after I quit my job, I was on a plane to climb Kilimanjaro. So that was kind of the start of this awesome new beginning of my life.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow. How old were you when you quit?
Stephanie Vermillion:
When I quit my job it was October 2018, so I had actually just turned 30 that year. So it was kind of a big milestone.
Shelby Stanger:
That's amazing. So was it scary to quit your job? How did you decide to do it?
Stephanie Vermillion:
Yeah. Anything is scary, like that, because of course there is New York City's cost of living. So we live in Cleveland now, it's a lot cheaper. In New York City at the time, that was a high cost of living. My husband was in residency where he wasn't making all that much money, so we were kind of like, uh-oh. But I got a part-time travel writing job that paid pennies, but it was consistent to kind of have something where I knew we could at least pay our rent. And so I got that secured and then that's when I felt confident enough to quit my job. But I would say the scarier parts were the years really months, but especially years just leading up to that of putting myself out there for writing opportunities that I always got no's to, putting myself out there by trying to do a vlog that I wasn't comfortable with doing wedding videos that I probably had no business doing, but I did.
I think the whole putting yourself out there and letting yourself feel stupid is something that we run from a lot. But I would say the more I got comfortable with that, the more I saw success because eventually those no's became yeses, and that's how I was able to fill the gap. So I had a part-time job, and then I also was starting to get more consistent yeses, and I figured if I'm spending 40 hours a week in this job, maybe if I spent 40 hours a week on my passion, that it would actually net out and it did.
Shelby Stanger:
Pitching articles and ideas as a freelance writer can be tough. Luckily, Stephanie began trying her hand at journalism before she quit her day job in PR. After work she'd spend hours pitching travel stories. A lot of her ideas were shot down, but she did her best to learn from rejection.
I want to hear a story about one of your first rejections and one of the first travel writing stories you got accepted.
Stephanie Vermillion:
I have this very visceral memory of my first rejection, and I think there's something beautiful about being new at something because you don't know how stupid you look, and I think that's great because you just put yourself out there. And sometimes I miss naive Stephanie from 10 years ago or whatever, who didn't realize that I had no business pitching what I pitched.
So CNN had this really awesome video program, it was video shorts called Great Big Story. And I was getting into video and I did maybe two wedding videos by this point. But again, I had no business pitching CNN a mini-documentary, but I had just gone to Costa Rica. And I'd planned this trip where I would be following these conservationists who are grassroots conservationists all around my age in their 20s and 30s who were dedicated to saving the Baird's tapir. So I don't know if you know what a tapir is, but it's a relative of the horse and a rhino, but that's not even what it looks like. It has this long little snout like Snuffleupagus I guess, kind of, and it twitches a little bit. And they have kind of like a rhinoceros looking body with a mini elephant trunk. Google it. They're so wild.
Shelby Stanger:
They're cool. I haven't seen one in person, but I've seen the pictures.
Stephanie Vermillion:
They're incredible. And so I wanted to do a video project that pushed my skill set of storytelling while highlighting a really cool project in a place that I had access to because these conservationists were like, yeah, come on down. We'll host you and you can sleep on our floors. Which I did. I'd never met these conservationists in real life, just only over Zoom.
So I talked a friend into coming down to Costa Rica with me, and we went on this long wild journey. I think it's one of my favorites still because I made it all happen. But we joined these conservationists to sleep basically out in the field following their work of looking at tapir poop and trying to understand where they might be and what they were eating, looking for tracks, driving through the jungle and getting lost in the middle of the night.
But all of that to say, we finally saw a tapir on this one day where it was really hazy, and I had my camera ready and I was so excited and I was filming and filming and filming as the tapir walked into the ocean and we had this beautiful silhouette. And then the tapir came up on the beach and it was sleeping, and you could see its little nostrils twitching. And so I had all this footage and I was so excited to create this project with interviews to send a Great Big Story. And they said, yes, please send it over. We'd love to see it.
And then I looked at the footage and it was totally blown out. It was terrible lighting. And I kind of tried to doctor it to see what would work. And long story short, because they had expressed interest I thought that meant yes. And I was like, this is it. This is my big break. And so I submitted it and they were like, no thanks. And I remember I was so sad. I got on a city bike from my office, went up to my apartment, which was less than a mile back home, and just cried and cried and cried and cried over my lunch break.
And then once I got that cry out, I was like, okay, I'll try again. And I think that's the one thing I've always said with pain and with sadness or with rejection is feel it, be sad and then do it again.
Shelby Stanger:
Did you ever sell that story?
Stephanie Vermillion:
Yeah, I ended up selling that story in different forms. I have written two articles about it in different capacities.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, so you took that rejection, you cried and you moved on. And I like that. You got to keep pitching. That's what I tell people when people tell me that they've pitched a story and someone said, no. I'm like, you pitched one person like pitched 100 and then tell me. If you get one yes that's all you need.
Stephanie Vermillion:
Absolutely. And I think too, and I'm curious if you feel this way, but I find it's a muscle. The more you do it, the more you put yourself out there, the more you hear no, the less it hurts, each time you learn... I went from crying for a whole lunch break over that to now it's like no to a huge project, okay, next.
Shelby Stanger:
People say that pitching is a numbers game, and that's definitely true, but there's also an art to it that most of us can only learn by doing. When Stephanie's ideas were rejected, she would often ask for notes on her pitch, and every once in a while she would get some really valuable feedback. Stephanie also took classes on pitching and writing, and she even invested in a coach who gave her critiques. Eventually she started to get the yeses that allowed her to write full-time.
Travel writer Stephanie Vermillion embarked on a full-time riding career in 2018. She's covered everything from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro to chasing the Northern Lights and exploring the Amazon. In recent years, Stephanie's focus has shifted to exploring nature After dark. She released a book last year called 100 Nights of a Lifetime: The World's Ultimate Adventures After Dark. She's also the astrotourism columnist for Outside Magazine.
Right now you have this column about adventuring outside and astro and celestial tourism, which I didn't even know was a thing. So I'm just curious, how did you start writing and getting excited about adventuring in the dark?
Stephanie Vermillion:
I think it all stems from during college. I was able to spend a month over the summer in Morocco, and I was sleeping in the Sahara Desert one of those nights, and I saw more stars than I knew was humanly possible. Growing up in a light-polluted mid-sized city in Ohio, Dayton, Ohio, you can see some planets, you can maybe see the Big Dipper, but you don't see the stars. And that night sleeping in the sand, actually, we pulled our little sleeping bag mattresses out of the tent so we could all sleep under the stars and we're sleeping on the sand looking up. And there's now what I know was a meteor shower occurring with all of these shooting stars. And you can see the galactic core, which is that really dynamic, glowing, yellowish center of our galaxy, that was overhead, shooting stars, thousands of these silvery pinpricks. And I was just like, what? This has been there the whole time.
So I would say that that opened my eyes just to the wonder of the night, of the night sky. So that was about 2010. Fast-forward to in 2019, I saw the Northern Lights for the first time, and it was like, game over. When I travel now I need to see what else is out there because you're telling me for this whole entirety of my life there were stars like that, there were Northern Lights that looked like that, and I didn't know that and chase that. And so I've kind of been chasing that awe, that feeling of just pure magic that I've never experienced during the daytime. Not to say daytime's not amazing, but the night is just, for me, it's next level.
And so that Northern Lights experience in 2019 and Iceland, that kind of coincided with the start of my travel writing career. I think one thing that's really cool with travel writing is if you're passionate about something, that passion can come out on the page. And so if you love something, write about it because I think that you can really spread that awe. And that's why I just started writing about nighttime adventures from stargazing. Of course, Northern Lights hunting. But then in this quest to find what else I had been missing in the dark I started going on nighttime safaris. I started going on jungle hikes in the Amazon at night, and it just kept opening my eyes to these new layers of the world that I didn't know existed. And so it's been fun to be able to write about it because I get paid to explore what else is happening after dark.
Shelby Stanger:
To be honest, I'm a little scared of the dark, but there's a lot of incredible things you can experience at night that you just simply can't see during the day. Certain creatures only come out after the sun goes down. That's why Stephanie has traveled to places like Tanzania to watch leopards and other animals in the dark, she's also paddled out into the ocean to see bioluminescence in action and repeatedly chase the Northern Lights in Iceland and Greenland. All that said, you don't need to fly around the world to appreciate how nature changes at night.
Stephanie Vermillion:
We're in this age of travel, of adventure travel where everyone wants to see the most remote XYZ place or they want to go to the highest peak or the deepest dive. But if you just go out at night, even for me in Cleveland, Ohio, if I walk a trail that I've taken with my dog countless times by day, if I go on that trail at night, it's totally different for two reasons. One, I'm more aware. My senses are heightened. I'm listening to everything. And at the same time too, the whole ecosystem changes. I'll look around and I'll see foxes that I would have never seen by day. You'll hear owls, which you would never hear by day. The world changes at night, and then the way we experience it does. And so sometimes it's as simple as just doing the same thing after dark.
Shelby Stanger:
I love that. I think we're all craving a bit of mystery. So much of our life is predictable right now because of technology, we kind of know what we're going to get. And at night, it sounds like there's still this element of surprise that we just can't expect. So I'm curious for you would've been some of the most surprising things you've seen while adventuring at night?
Stephanie Vermillion:
Let's think. There's so many. Just about everywhere has something happening at night. So for example, I really wanted to go to the Amazon, and for those who haven't been, a big part of the Amazon is the nighttime. Because what's cool about the Amazon rainforest is that's such dense vegetation that they're kind of hiding and you can't really see that much. So our guide in the Amazon took my husband and me across this really tall canopy bridge basically at the same level of the treetops. And that's where the majority of life in the Amazon lives, they create these little ecosystems up there, like little sky islands. It's so cool. And our guide was like, you know what? We should go up there for sunset to watch the sun turn the trees, these beautiful orangish blush hues with the clouds in the distance and we thought it would be a beautiful photo op.
So we go up there at sunset. Mind you, these are I think around 100 feet off of the ground. And I'm afraid of heights, which is funny because I always find myself in very tall things. But we're up there enjoying the sunset, listening to monkeys, looking for sloths, and then our guide's like, you know what? Let's go the other way down so that we can see the whole entirety of the bridge. So we walk across the bridge, and as we're going down, we see this giant anteater come out of the bushes, but approached us and we were like, no, no, no, no, no, not because we didn't want to, they're so cute, but because you shouldn't interact with wild animals. And our guide was like, uh-oh. So he's like, just stay still and see what happens. And it comes up and it sniffs each of us, and then it starts trying to crawl up my husband with these huge claws, and we're like, okay, we've got to go because we don't want it to hurt himself, this anteater. And these claws are-
Shelby Stanger:
That's terrifying.
Stephanie Vermillion:
... wild. It's puncture wound potential. And so then the guide is just like, go back up on the canopy walk and we'll just go to the other side. And so we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we started doing that. And when I get up there, I'm like, are you serious? I have to walk all the way across this canopy again that I was scared to walk over the first time. But it was kind of cool because like I said, the cicadas are coming to life. You're hearing all of the frogs. And so we kind of got to experience this long, which for me was treacherous, but this long walk above the canopy listening to the daytime, and then because it was the night we heard it erupt with this cacophony of the animal kingdom after dark. And we got to really hear the two extremes of how the jungle changes when night descends.
Shelby Stanger:
The jungle can be so loud at night. I had never experienced anything like it until I was in the Amazon a couple times in Costa Rica when I was in the far south, but it's like it's turning your stereo onto the soundscapes of the jungle on full blast. It's loud. You can't sleep through it.
Stephanie Vermillion:
With the work I do I'm always listening to the animal kingdom come alive at night, but it's not always animals that are loud. On this one trip I took two years ago in South Greenland they have this kind of trekking route where you can trek from one sheep farm to another sheep farm. Once I passed all of the travelers that were just there for the day, it was me and sheep for five miles and five very grueling miles. And because it's the Northern lights, that's what I was seeking, in addition to sheep and all of that, I had a 50 pound pack on my back. I had a front purse slash makeshift pack on my front that I was just carrying my cameras in so I could get them out to photograph because I'm also a photographer.
And I was doing this huge hike and I got to this sheep farm where I was staying after five miles and this sheep farm is located right on a very active ice fjord. And so they showed me the path... And mind you, I'm the only guest because most people visit in the summer, and I was there in September for Northern Lights. So they showed me the path to get out to the ice fjord so that I could go photograph the Northern Lights that night with the ice in the foreground. How awesome would that be? And so I finally waited, finally dark came, and I went out and did that trail. And I was sitting there waiting for the Northern Lights, and it was terrifying because the ice was so loud and the ice was so creaky, and you would just hear these smacks when it hit the water. And I kept looking around. Senses were so heightened, my pulse is racing now thinking about it. But that was the Northern Lights eventually came, and it was wild and it was so much fun.
But that's another example of it's not just the animals that come to life at night, but you also just hear the world in a way you don't during the day.
Shelby Stanger:
Stephanie's new book describes snorkeling at night with manta rays off the coast of Hawaii, hiking by moonlight in Arches National Park and sleeping under the stars in the Sahara Desert. Whether you're traveling the world or staying close to home, there are so many different kinds of nocturnal adventures. It can be pretty easy to get started, but there are a few important tips to keep in mind before you head out into the night.
So you've sold us on nighttime adventuring. How can we start? I love the idea of just going out your trail that you always hike, but doing it at night. But what sort of precautions do we need to take? What else do we need to be prepared for that we don't have to deal with during the day?
Stephanie Vermillion:
A big rule of thumb in nighttime adventuring, and this is something that a lot of astro-photographers talk about, but I think it's relevant for any night adventure, is to experience the destination by day. If you are going to stargaze in a new place, go by day, see what it's like, look around. Are there hazards? Are there drop-offs where maybe you shouldn't get too close to in case you sneeze and fall off the side of a cliff? Don't do that. So definitely visit by day.
And I would also say too, especially for people who are maybe newer to the night, is just Google nighttime tours in your area or in the next destination you're visiting. Because I was just really surprised to learn as I was researching my book, how many night adventures are out there, way more than I could fit in a book of 100 of the best night adventures. And that I think is such a good opportunity to experience the night in a safe way with a guide because they know where they're going, they know the local wildlife, they know the gear you might need, and they can tell you the science behind it, they can talk about their story of the first time they saw it. And so I do think that nocturism, nighttime adventuring, whatever you want to call it really is best experienced with other people, especially people from the destination, because going with a buddy, especially if that buddy is an expert, can also make a nighttime adventure safer.
Shelby Stanger:
And if you're planning on doing a backyard nighttime adventure, how do you prepare during the day? What do you actually do to prep for your nighttime activity?
Stephanie Vermillion:
If you're going in your backyard, the way I do it, I literally just take a beach towel and I take my dog outside and we sit and look at the sky and it's just a lot of fun and very safe because it's our backyard. But when I'm going on, say a full moon hike in a national park, you want to, like I said, explore the place by day. Check in at the ranger station or talk to someone who's local if you're doing this by yourself, preferably with another person at least just because power in numbers. But talk to the local rangers just to get a lay of the land. Is there wildlife you need to watch out for? Is there a trail that's maybe treacherous at night? Again, you would know that by experiencing it by day.
Also, make sure that where you're visiting is open. I think that's an unfortunate thing, and I know it's for safety, but I was actually just writing an article the other day to help people stargazing and so many parks I was looking at I was like, oh, well, they close at eight o'clock, that doesn't help. So know that where you're going is open because you don't want to trespass.
And then I would also say to always bring a headlamp, of course, but look for a headlamp that has red light capabilities because it takes our eyes about 20 to 30 minutes to adjust to the dark after exposure to bright white light. If you have red light though, that is a lot easier on your eyes, you can still see. If I'm hiking to a place, I have my bright headlamp on until I get to the place and then I switch to red. So as I'm setting up my gear, as I'm looking around for the perfect spot, I typically try to use the red or no light once I'm set up.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, I love that. And also the red light is better for animals, I'm guessing too.
Stephanie Vermillion:
It is. Absolutely. Yep. And then one other thing I would say too is always make sure you have a portable charger and the right cords for said portable charger. Because especially for me when I'm Northern Lights hunting, I have all of these prediction apps and forecasting tools and cloud cover apps and my battery drains so quickly. And if you, like me, sometimes forget which way you're going to get back to your cabin and need your map it's nice to have a portable charger in case you've drained your battery.
Shelby Stanger:
Stephanie also shared a couple of great resources for anyone curious about stargazing. First, you'll want to look up a dark sky map in your area. These maps are available for free online, and they will show you the best spots to avoid light pollution. She likes the site, lightpollutionmap.info. Hipcamp even has a dark sky layer on their site so you can find campsites that are perfect for watching the stars. Depending on where you live you might also find local tours that specialize in nighttime adventures, we'll link to some of those resources in the show notes. If you want to dive deeper into astrotourism and other after dark experiences, check out Stephanie's book 100 Nights of a Lifetime. You can find it wherever you buy your books. We'll also put a link in the show notes. To keep in touch with Stephanie directly you can find her on Instagram at byStephanieVermilion, that's B-Y-S-T-E-P-H-A-N-I-E-V-E-R-M-I-L-L-I-O-N. You can also visit her website, stephanievermillion.com.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Piers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hannah Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Motila and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.