Ammi Midstokke, MBA, FNTP

Say what you want about homeschooling…

…but growing up on Pink Floyd, Five Acres to Independence, and Carnation powdered milk seems to make one hell of a storyteller. It’s the kind of life that is so fantastic, so marvelous in its tiny, daily miracles and meanderings, one is compelled to create and share its wonders. Maybe that’s exactly why I became a writer. And we know that I am a writer because this picture over here is the most writerly photo of me in existence. In most other pictures, I’m bleeding or have chocolate on my face. Often both.

I have been a writer for as long as I can remember, although my first real memory of writing was related to a time I was served a 100-sentence punishment at the age of seven. Perhaps bothered by the censorship and structure of such discipline, I took to diaries stuffed with the diaspora of a child’s imagination. Not much has changed.

Only, these days…

What I want to write about, what fills me with curiosity and humor and… words, is the kind of stuff we often overlook or under-appreciate as we wander through our lives. I like to hear the stories, watch the stories of people and untangle the threads of common humanity. There are the most remarkable things to learn about ourselves and each other by the way we drink a cup of tea or split a round of wood, by the things we leave on top of our dressers and our single-word responses. I want to write about that. And about what people care about: Each other, saving forests, taking ourselves too seriously, the ever-evolving sociocultural state, the histories that shape us as humans, parents, partners, and the experiences that shape us now. And so, in one way, or another, I do.

When I’m not writing, I can be found running, hiking, and biking about in the mountains with my brown dog, Freya. I live in Sandpoint, Idaho with my husband and children.

The writer in search of stories…

  • Dunes

  • How backwoods folk wed

  • Selkirk traversin'

  • The only time I yoga

  • Mount Hood and a protegé

  • My bestie's rear end.

  • B @ Burning Man

  • That other time I yoga'd

  • My version of the genre "mystery, horror, and varmint"

  • The elusive Lumberlover in his natural habitat.

  • That one time I met a pouncing boulder (curtesy Pete Claydon)

  • Oh it's Grand...

  • Bikepacker fuel

  • North Idaho Gothic

  • My response to the pandemic

  • The top of a thing

  • Deep sand, sharp corner

  • Happiness

  • Same map, different directions

  • The Cabinet Mountains

  • Zion National Park

  • Baja

  • Priest Lake writer's paradise

  • Friendventure

  • Freya does the National Gallery of Art (preferring the dogs)

  • Mother-in-law trust building

  • Isle of Skye

  • What tranquility looks like

  • Places that inspire

  • Appalachian Trail

  • No we're not lost. Again.

  • Album: Things I'm not good at

  • Whitehead Island, Maine