Sylvia Forbes  got started freelancing in a back-door kind of way. Right after finishing college, she decided to head west and ended up falling in love with the scenery. From the multi-hued, canyon-studded, touch-the-sky mountains, to the prickly, paper-dry desert, every place she visited in the western U.S. had its own mystical allure. She never did use her nutrition degree, but returned to college, this time for a degree in botany, learning the names, faces and stories of hundreds of plants. She enjoyed discovering watercress growing wild in desert creeks once hiked by naturalist Edward Abbey, hearing the wind whisper its messages through the pines on the same Mogollon Rim where Zane Grey wrote his western novels, and hiking through the geological layers of time deep into the Grand Canyon once explored by John Wesley Powell.

Working at a botanical garden introduced her to amazing plants from all over the world and gave her the opportunity to study them up close. Several seasons with the National Park Service introduced her to some of the most unspoiled places on earth.

In 2001, Sylvia became a full-time freelance writer, and now writes about a myriad of topics. Her freelance jaunts have led her on many rewarding adventures, including trail-riding at an Arizona dude ranch, house-boating in Kentucky, bird watching in Texas, canoeing in Michigan, touring lighthouses in Maine, hiking the Grand Canyon, whale-watching in Baja, butterfly-watching in Alabama, snorkeling in the Dry Tortugas, backpacking in the Sierra Nevada, hunting for edible native plants in the Rockies, garden touring the Pacific Northwest, dolphin-watching off South Padre Island, looking at geologic formations in the Smoky Mountains, touring millionaire mansions along the Hudson River Valley, indulging at a Branson luxury spa, and many more exciting trips.

In 2006, she added another hat to her collection, that of publisher. As publisher of Snowflake Press, each year she publishes the Bylines Writer’s Desk Calendar (www.bylinescalendar.com), which includes essays on writing and variety of helpful tools for writers.