Steve Pollick, the former outdoors editor for The (Toledo) Blade, even after decades of international adventures and more awards than he can count, remains one of the most humble, unassuming, approachable, and genuinely friendly people anyone could ever meet. He spent decades narrating his travels for his readers, and, now in his late 70s, still has a regular outdoors/environmental column, “Open Season,” that appears monthly in Ohio Outdoor News.
Recently, I sat down with Steve to talk about his career and his life in the outdoors, and just listen to some of his fascinating stories.
During the second half of the 20th century, every big-city daily newspaper in Ohio employed a full-time outdoors writer. That person wrote a column several times per week — usually including a feature-length story on Sundays — highlighting the Buckeye State’s fishing, hunting, natural resources, and nature-related activities. Among the very best of those unique scribes was Pollick, who wrote for The Blade from 1982 to 2011.
When Steve Pollick accepted a job as the outdoors editor for The (Toledo) Blade, the owner told him to travel the world and "just do The Blade some good." It was an outdoor writer's dream come true.
Born in Cleveland and raised in Fremont, Pollick displayed early interests in both the outdoors and writing. He soon discovered, through his high school English teachers, that he had an innate ability to break down complex concepts and make them easy for people to understand.
He graduated from the University of Toledo and earned a master’s from Ohio State, then went to work as a general assignment reporter for The Blade. His editors noticed his well-researched, accurate stories, and offered him the coveted position of outdoors editor. He jumped at it.
“When I accepted the job, [owner Paul Block Jr.] told me he expected just two simple things of me,” Pollick remembers: “‘I want you to travel the world, and just do The Blade some good.’ It was an outdoor writer’s dream come true.”
Pollick certainly took the assignment to heart. He traveled to some 45 countries during his nearly 30-year career, filing stories from exotic locations around the globe — including two notable trips to China and one to the Arctic in extreme northern Canada.
“The China trips involved me tagging along with members of the Toledo Zoo, who were working with the Chinese government to live-trap pandas in the bamboo forests of China’s Southwest Mountains,” Pollick says. “Some of the captured pandas were transported to China’s Wolong research center, while others came to Toledo for a one-year exhibit.”
The trip to the Barren Grounds of the central Canadian Arctic was for a series of stories on the “caribou” Inuits, indigenous people who mistakenly used to be called Eskimos. “They survived primarily by hunting migratory caribou, and I wanted to tell the story of their primitive, disappearing culture,” Pollick says. “I rode dog sleds pulled by fan-teams, with Elizabeth Alooq, the first Nunavut provincial minister, who spoke almost no English.”
Pollick’s newspaper stories were so enlightening and worldwide in scope that they quickly caught the attention of the prestigious Explorers Club in New York City, and he was made a member in 1987 (joining fellow Ohioans Neil Armstrong and John Glenn). He was granted emeritus status in 2017, six years after retiring from The Blade. “Apparently they thought my writings contributed to the good of the Explorers Club mission of education,” he says, “so I rated the extra recognition.”
Pollick says he dodged death at least eight times during his many years of traveling to remote locations around the globe. “I was charged by large, dangerous wild animals three times: a bull hippo, cow elephant, and female tiger. I nearly froze to death, twice; almost crashed a bush plane I was flying; survived a 105-degree fever for several days; and much closer to home, on Lake Erie, two fishing buddies and I had our boat completely swamped by a rogue wave.”
Of course, things weren’t always so life-or-death. He remembers being invited to eat a meal in a rural Chinese community, where he was seated around a wooden table with a large stew pot sitting in the middle of it. “My host handed me a ladle and motioned for me to dip out some food from the pot,” he says. “When I did so, out came a rooster’s head, complete with neck attached. My host was very pleased, as the head and neck were considered the choice pieces of the meal. Actually, it didn’t taste too bad.”
Pollick says one of the greatest outdoor memories of his career came while covering the 2000 Iditarod, the annual sled dog race stretching 938 miles from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska.
“One night, I had the opportunity to borrow a snowmobile and take a solo ride of several miles up into the mountains,” he says. “The temperature was ‘plenty-below zero,’ but I was dressed for it. I remember it was a clear, windless, star-filled night, with the colorful Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, hanging over it all.
“I stopped the snowmobile in a mountain pass, and as I sat there in the deep silence of Alaska’s winter wilderness, a wolf pack began howling far away on the ridge to my left. They were soon answered by a second wolf pack howling far away on the ridge to my right. It was one of the most spectacular, serendipitous moments I’ve ever experienced in the out-of-doors — that experience went deep into my soul.”
Steve Pollick was inducted into the Ohio Natural Resources Hall of Fame in 2022.
