Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 513 is my conversation with Matt Smythe, a writer for Free Range American, a lifelong bowhunter, and one of the more thoughtful voices in outdoor storytelling. Matt and I talk about poetry and place, a short film he was part of that played five festivals, the families who watch a trailer every morning as a daily affirmation before changing their lives, and where outdoor writing goes from here. It is a slower, deeper conversation than most.
▶ Watch on YouTube · 🎧 Listen now
Matt Smythe is a writer for Free Range American and a lifelong bowhunter who has thought and written extensively about poetry, place, and the craft of outdoor storytelling. He started bowhunting at age 14, returned to it seriously after graduate school, and approaches the outdoors as both a writer and a hunter interested in the deeper meaning of time spent in wild places.
Matt writes about the outdoors with an emphasis on poetry, place, and meaning rather than just how-to tactics. As a contributor to Free Range American, he explores why people are drawn to wild country, how the land shapes identity, and what hunting and fishing reveal about a person. His work treats outdoor writing as a literary craft, not just content.
Matt was part of a short film that was selected for five different film festivals and played in many places. He describes how its trailer resonated with people on the edge of major life changes — including a couple who had both beaten cancer and watched the trailer every morning as a daily affirmation. The film tapped into the theme of people deciding to reorient their lives around what matters.
Matt started bowhunting at age 14, learning from his father, who had the good sense to keep his early tree stands only five to eight feet off the ground. He drifted away from it in high school as sports and other priorities took over, then returned to hunting seriously after graduate school, spending a full year scouting before he got back into it. He did not kill a deer until he was 30.
Matt cares about preserving depth and craft in outdoor writing at a time when fast, disposable content dominates. He treats writing about the outdoors as a literary pursuit rooted in poetry and place, and the conversation explores how that kind of slower, more meaningful storytelling can survive and matter in the modern outdoor media landscape.
Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 513 with Matt Smythe is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. The video version is embedded at the top of this page.
Most of my conversations are about how to do something — catch the fish, make the shot, build the business. Matt is a different kind of guest. He thinks about why we do these things, and he writes about the outdoors the way a poet would. I wanted to slow down and have that conversation: about place, about patience, about a film that moved people to change their lives, and about whether real craft in outdoor writing can survive in a world that rewards speed over depth.
Matt told me about a couple — both cancer survivors — who watched the trailer for his film every morning as a daily affirmation before deciding to change their lives. The film that hit five festivals clearly touched something. He explains what that response taught him about why people are drawn to the outdoors. Press play to hear the story.
Matt started bowhunting at 14 and did not kill a deer until 30, and he is honest that he spent plenty of early years asleep in a tree stand. He talks about what those long, fishless and gameless years built in him. It is a quiet argument for patience that goes well beyond hunting. Watch the YouTube player above for it.
For Matt, the outdoors is not a backdrop — it is a character. He explains how place shapes identity and why he writes about land and water with the attention a poet gives a subject. The way he thinks about this is different from almost any guest I have had. Hear it in the episode.
▶ Watch the full conversation on YouTube · 🎧 Listen now
We get into the big question: in a world of fast, disposable content, is there still room for slow, literary outdoor writing? Matt makes the case for depth and craft and what it costs to keep them alive. If you care about writing or about the outdoors, this is the section to listen to. Watch the player above.
The day after talking to Matt, the image that stayed with me was the couple watching that trailer every morning. A piece of outdoor storytelling became the thing that pushed two people to live differently. That is what good work can do.
Matt reminded me that the outdoors is not only about the catch or the kill — it is about meaning, patience, and place. We need the people who write it that way, especially now.
▶ Watch the full conversation on YouTube · 🎧 Listen now
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Matt Smythe is a writer for Free Range American and a lifelong bowhunter known for treating outdoor writing as a literary craft rooted in poetry and place. He began bowhunting at 14, returned to it seriously after graduate school, and has been part of a short film that played five festivals. His work explores why people are drawn to wild country and what hunting and fishing reveal about who we are.
Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 513, featuring Matt Smythe...
Matt is a writer for Free Range American whose background is in poetry, and this conversation traces how a life spent in fly fishing, hunting, and the outdoors shaped his voice on the page, from an MFA in poetry to writing a story a day.
Tom Rowland: Matt, how are you doing, man?
Matt Smythe: I'm very well. How about you?
Tom Rowland: I'm doing great. I couldn't be any better. I just got back from an amazing trip with my sons in Montana, and it was refreshing, reenergizing, invigorating. It was awesome.
Matt Smythe: You were out for elk, right?
Tom Rowland: Yeah, it was fantastic. My son set a goal when he was twelve years old, after he saw his first archery elk hunting video at the orthodontist's office. He went to Montana State in Bozeman, started bow hunting five years ago, and had been unsuccessful thus far, like a lot of elk hunters. It's a very difficult pursuit, but we got it done this year. I've been with him three times, and we've had some close calls, but it finally happened, and it was amazing.
Matt Smythe: That's awesome. I've been bow hunting since I was fourteen. My dad bow hunted and gun hunted, and I got into it young, but I didn't kill a deer until I was thirty.
Tom Rowland: Really? You started at fourteen and didn't kill a deer until you were thirty?
Matt Smythe: To be fair, I spent a lot of my early years asleep in my tree stand.
Tom Rowland: Well, me too. That's actually why I'm a little afraid of deer hunting. I'm partly narcoleptic, I think, and I'm afraid of falling out of the stand. When I go turkey hunting I fall asleep all the time, so why wouldn't I fall asleep in a deer stand when you're all zipped up warm in your puffy clothes?
Matt Smythe: My dad had the good sense to keep my first stands no more than five or eight feet off the ground, so if I fell I'd just be standing up brushing myself off. I got away from hunting a little toward the end of high school, other things took priority, and then I was in the service for a bunch of years, so I didn't get back to it until after grad school. That first year back, I scouted hard, shot a lot before the season, and managed to grunt in an eight-pointer and shot it at seven yards. I had a Volvo wagon at the time, and I drove it right into the field after I got the deer dressed out, threw it in the back, and drove to where my dad was hunting so I could show him.
Tom Rowland: Nice, that's a great memory. What made you decide to go back to hunting? A lot of people who grow up hunting get away from it for a while.
Matt Smythe: A lot of it had to do with timing. I got married just before grad school, and we had two kids while I was in grad school. When we moved back from Northern Virginia I just didn't have the opportunity to hunt, and between grad school and the kids it didn't really register, though I fished a lot. When we moved home, my wife's family had a lot of property, and I figured I'd get back into it. I missed being in the woods before dawn, listening to the world wake up. It's always been something I've loved, and since then, along with fishing, it's been growing year over year. The addiction is back.
Tom Rowland: So you went into the service and then back to school afterward. How did that work?
Matt Smythe: I wasn't ready for college when I graduated high school. I was seventeen when I enlisted, during my senior year, and I had no idea what I wanted to do. I didn't want my parents, or myself, paying for college when I didn't know what I wanted out of it, so I enlisted. My first day of basic training was the first day of Desert Shield, as a combat engineer, which was an eye-opening experience, but I knew I was exactly where I needed to be. I changed jobs after a couple of years to ordnance, and was stationed in Germany, Georgia, and England. By the time I got out in '95, I went into the active reserve and then to junior college. School was suddenly easy, I loved science and math where I'd struggled before, and I changed majors something like six times before finally landing on creative writing, specifically poetry, in my last year of undergrad. That was a switch from biochemistry and forensics. I'd wanted to go into forensic investigation, and even did autopsies for a year at a local hospital, before I switched majors and went to grad school for poetry.
Tom Rowland: I found you through Free Range American, which is a great website, and you write a ton of articles there. A lot of your prose has a poetic cadence to it, and then I found your blog full of poems, so it made sense. Is that on purpose?
Matt Smythe: It is, but I think it's more out of practice than anything. In grad school I was writing poetry every day, journaling every morning, and once I found my voice it spilled over into my prose. After I graduated from George Mason, I got a job in advertising and worked into copywriting. Because I was older and didn't have a typical ad background, people would say things like, just because you have a degree in poetry doesn't mean you can write ad copy. My response was that it actually makes me a better candidate, because it's about economy of words. It's the billboard on the highway, you've got seven words or less to say exactly what needs to be said, and that's my wheelhouse. So when I write stories, my poetic voice comes out, because I appreciate the economy of words and putting people in a place within a finite amount of time. When I get a little more room to breathe, it lets me do that even more.
Tom Rowland: I always liked the scene in A River Runs Through It where they have to write an essay for their father, and he reads it and just says, "Half as long." They turn it back in, and he says, "Good, now half as long again." Even just watching that movie you think about how you can make the same point in a lot fewer words, and it flows better. But what drew you to poetry in the first place? In high school I would have said no way.
Matt Smythe: When I changed majors, I fell in love with the Beat poets, Robert Lowell, Robert Frost, Whitman, and others. What drew me to them was the life experience and the everyday, warts and all, that they brought into their work. I appreciated that as someone coming to my education older than most of my cohort, and the freedom to write about things that are personal and gritty, whether or not they're about me specifically.
Matt Smythe: I had written a poem from my time doing autopsies. The toughest cases were always when children died. There was a mother who had lost her child, and the baby had already been brought down to the cooler to wait for autopsy, but the mother wanted to see her baby once more. The nurses took one of the blue baby blankets and microwaved it to make it warm, wrapped the baby in it, and handed the baby to the mother, so she was holding a warm body. That's a profound, behind-the-scenes moment that people don't see. I was gutted, but I also felt privileged to witness that level of care and compassion, and being able to write about moments like that became very important to me. Every writer starts out thinking the world needs to hear what they have to say, which is great for being prolific, but it's also what helps you dial in your voice and get past writing for ego, and start writing for real. Being as genuine and real as possible has been important to me from the beginning. I try to keep my own exposition out of it and leave a lot up to the reader, bringing them to a point where they see a juxtaposition or a situation, and even when there's some finality to what I write, there's still room for the reader's own interpretation.
Tom Rowland: When you find your voice writing about serious things like the autopsy work, how does that transition into the outdoors?
Matt Smythe: Around that same time in grad school, I also learned to fly fish, and that was a profound combination of things coming together. Fly fishing, as a theme, opened the door to talk about a lot of other things that were going on. I was fly fishing in Northern Virginia between 2001 and 2004, when nine-eleven happened, the sniper shootings, the anthrax scares, the first human case of West Nile virus, there was a lot going on. I was teaching after nine-eleven, and a lot of my students had experienced loss, whether at the Pentagon or the towers. Fly fishing let me be contemplative, gave me time to think, often very early or as the light was failing, with no noise around. Communing with nature that way, I'd find connections I or others wouldn't normally make in the routine of a day, and that transitioned very readily into hunting as well, getting in well before dawn, sitting in a stand, feeling how close the darkness is, and then as light creeps in, how the world gets bigger and you start to hear things further away. Poetry helped me pay more attention to what's going on around me and notice those things.
Tom Rowland: I love that time of day. I'm a morning guy, my fishing partner Rich likes the afternoon, but I'm not drawn to last light the way I am to first light. You get in the middle of the woods and there's almost zero noise, and then the birds and crickets start, and it all comes to life, and that's when the animals move and the fish get happy. When you get out there early like that, you're part of this unfolding of the day, you see the sunrise, and there's this big party that goes on from just before light to maybe an hour afterward, and then it all blends into daytime. That would be hard for me to write about, or even explain to someone who hasn't experienced it, like sitting in a blind, or looking for tarpon on a completely flat ocean, knowing that in thirty minutes there will be a hundred tarpon rolling right there, but right now everything's sleeping. I had a customer, Fitz Coker, one of the best tarpon fishermen in the world, who used to say we were going to find tarpon that had been playing poker all night, and we were going to go in there and wreck their game.
Matt Smythe: Smell of cigars.
Tom Rowland: I saw the film you did with the Rockhouse Motion guys, A Deliberate Life. What part did you play in something like that?
Matt Smythe: The origin story is that my buddy Grant Taylor, a photographer, and I had both just made changes, I'd stepped away from being agency-side in advertising to go out on my own, and Grant had been let go from his job. We decided to go out west, since neither of us had really spent time there, and spent ten days meeting up with people I knew through my blog, which I'd been writing since 2009. They showed us their home water, the South Fork of the Snake, the Owyhee, Henry's Fork, the Payette, and the Salmon up into the Sawtooth Range, country we just don't have in western New York. When we got back, Grant had close to eleven thousand images, and I knew a few blog posts with photos wouldn't do it justice. I came up with the idea for a film and the basis of the storyline. Grant had been talking to Matt White, the founder of Rockhouse, who wanted to expand beyond the whitetail hunting films he and his brothers had been making and get into fishing. We connected, shot a teaser video in Kansas to try to land sponsorships, and I caught what was probably the only rainbow trout in Kansas, most likely a stocker, out of a little spill stream. We hooked up with them, and the next September went back out for ten days, retracing our steps and adding a few new ones. I had a story I wanted to tell, and those guys were able to bring it to life visually. At the time, I'm biased, but it was arguably one of the best outdoor videos produced, and it was more than just fish porn, it actually had a story.
Tom Rowland: I hadn't seen it until recently, but it was shot on the South Fork of the Snake, which is the river I started my guide career on, so I have a soft spot for it. There's a moment where three people are sitting with their feet in the water eating lunch, and that's exactly how we used to eat lunch on the South Fork. The whole film is about choosing a deliberate life, choosing to pay attention to what's actually important instead of the pressure of everything else. What was the reception like?
Matt Smythe: It really resonated. I know people who finally pulled the plug on what they were doing in Rhode Island and Colorado and packed up the family and moved to Montana. There was a couple in Ireland, he had beaten cancer, and his wife had just beaten breast cancer, and the film was something they watched as a daily affirmation every morning. There were people who finally made the move on a job they'd been dragging their feet on, or who dialed back in with their family and the things that matter with their kids, and it hit a lot of people, even people who weren't in the outdoor industry at all. We were lucky, the film was selected for five different film festivals, so it played for a lot of different audiences, and the fly fishing community really welcomed it. There's been a lot of amazing outdoor video since, some with great storytelling and some that's just fish porn, all of it has value, but we kind of bucked the trend early. There weren't giants in that film, there were some great fish, but at the end of the day it was about how the five of us grew up in the outdoors, got away from it for a while, realized the hole that left in our lives, realized how unsustainable what we'd tried to fill that hole with was, and chose to refill it with what we're actually passionate about.
Tom Rowland: Where can people watch it?
Matt Smythe: It's on Vimeo, on my page. If you search "fishing poet" on Vimeo you'll find it. There's a long version at thirty-six minutes, an eighteen-minute version that went through the film festivals, and a trailer, depending on your appetite for length. My website is mattsmythe.com.
Tom Rowland: It's well worth your time. It spoke to me even though I'm very happy with my life and I followed my own passion, it still made me think I should be doing more of the things I want to do and less of the things I don't. What the film says to me is that you can choose, you can choose to feel the pressure of the world and all the appointments and social media, or you can choose to live differently, and that's what these characters deliberately chose, even if it meant making less money or having to move. A lot of people who listen to this podcast reach out because they're in a transitional time, wanting to do something else but not sure if now is the right time. It really wasn't a conscious choice for me either. I wasn't very good at school, I didn't have the patience or the focus, until I found fly fishing, and then all of a sudden I was reading books cover to cover and asking questions I'd have avoided before. I don't have a magic answer for people wanting to quit their job and become, say, a fishing guide, except that it takes hard work and an actual deliberate decision that you're going to do it. Once you decide, you put your heart and soul into it regardless of the outcome, whether that means living in a trailer or living in your car, and it almost always works out better if you commit fully.
Tom Rowland: That movie had a real economy of words, there was a lot of silence in it, and then some interviews woven together in a way that was artistic and cool. Is that where your role came in, putting that structure together?
Matt Smythe: From an editorial standpoint, working with Matt White, the structure is sort of chapters. We have the interviews early on about how everyone grew up in the outdoors and their love of place, then the struggle, and then on out. Once we hashed out the storyline and that order, the imagery really fell into place, whether a moment called for something contemplative or something with more urgency, it comes together a lot easier once you have the arc of the story.
Tom Rowland: Changing gears, how did you get hooked up with Free Range American and Black Rifle?
Matt Smythe: My last job before that was head of communications for the American Fly Fishing Trade Association, on the trade side, helping grow the sport and our member base. That job ended in October 2020, largely because of COVID and the fact that we weren't able to hold our trade show, the IFTD, so things got lean and I had to go. I went fishing that November with Marty Skovlund, the executive editor of Black Rifle Coffee and of Coffee or Die, our sister publication, and then Free Range American. We were introduced by a former Ranger we both knew, who I know through Project Healing Waters. Marty and I got to talking, kept talking afterward, and the opportunity came up to write for Free Range American. I started in February, on contract for a few months, tasked with trying to write a story a day, which is something I had never done, not even in my busiest days of blogging.
Tom Rowland: How has that affected your writing? Is it flowing easier, or is it more challenging?
Matt Smythe: The writing itself is interesting, because there's definitely an approach to journalism, whether it's a news story, five of the best barbecue joints in the country, eighteen old-school blues musicians you need to know, or a record buck or an outrageous hunt. Writing is kind of universal, but there are things you need to do to maintain the voice readers want and the pace of a daily publication. Honestly, I haven't done any writing for myself since I started, partly because when I get downtime I want to fish or be outside, hiking, or hunting season's coming up, so it's affected that a little. But as long as I have topics, I've been very fortunate, Free Range American is pretty much whatever's kicking around in my mind, and it's stuff that matters to us as writers and editors and to the people we're writing for. I've learned more about alligators and coelacanths than I ever expected, and I love it because I get to research, and get to talk to people I normally wouldn't.
Matt Smythe: I recently spoke with a woman up in Alaska, Tana, who went on a solo caribou hunt four months after a bear attack. I'd read about the attack and got in touch with her through Instagram, and we talked on the phone about the whole story.
Tom Rowland: I read that piece. I'm just coming off this elk hunt where my son shot his elk, and even though I've been around elk in Yellowstone a ton, when one is right there on the ground in front of you, you realize what a huge animal it actually is. A caribou is probably even bigger, and she managed to take one of the biggest ones that's ever walked the earth. Did she say the hunt was about getting back on the horse after the attack, in a sense?
Matt Smythe: I asked her that directly, whether it was a way to prove to herself she was actually alright. She said there was a lot she had to deal with after the experience, times a bear would come toward camp and she'd have her hand on her hip, or she'd go with friends on day trips. But for her, with a whole passel of kids, it was mostly about meat, and her philosophy, much like Donnie Vincent's, was about killing the oldest animal in the herd, the one that's seen the most seasons, out of respect, and because they hunt to eat. This particular caribou happened to be the only one in miles, so finding it, and seeing how big it was, was really about subsistence and the fact that she loves to hunt, she is a hunter. I think that residual fear from the bear attack is just part and parcel of life in Alaska for her and her husband, wildly different than it is in the Lower 48, where it takes people a lot longer to get back on the horse after something like that.
Tom Rowland: There's a similar story from the show Life Below Zero, a woman named Sue who lives alone at a remote camp, was attacked by a bear, and while recovering in the hospital decided she had to go back and deal with that bear because it now thought the camp was his. She went back on crutches and handled it. She told the story on the Joe Rogan podcast, and it might be the best episode of his I've ever heard, I couldn't stop listening.
Tom Rowland: One of the things I wanted to ask about is that you've written a couple of articles on the water situation in Florida, which comes up on this podcast a lot, including an interview with Daniel Andrews and Chris Wittman of Captains for Clean Water. What's your take on it as an outsider, not a Floridian?
Matt Smythe: You're right, I'm definitely an outsider, though an interested one because of the time I spent with AFTA, where we worked on conservation efforts around the country, from the Pebble Mine to the Everglades and everywhere in between. For me it speaks to the idea that this is all our backyard, this is directly where people are making a living, and it's affecting their livelihoods everywhere. I like conversations that focus on solutions rather than finger-pointing, though identifying the root cause and accountability absolutely matters too. It's terrible that Florida goes through the red tide and blue-green algae every year, and the fish kills seem to be getting worse. I had fished in Tampa for tarpon earlier in the year, before things kicked off, so seeing the images afterward and remembering being there gave me context, and it's heartbreaking. Looking back, when the Army Corps first started putting in canals and diverting water for agriculture, there's no way they could have foreseen the population boom that followed, but something has to be done now. Guides have been very proactive about it, and as Chris says, it comes down to political will, and that will is building because people are listening and the voice is getting louder. The people pushing for solutions with the Army Corps on discharges are keeping the pressure on while trying to find something workable, even knowing somebody's going to be unhappy either way, and folks on the other side of that also have to learn to give a little.
Tom Rowland: I think one of the biggest advancements in the fight for clean water, thanks to groups like Captains for Clean Water, has been getting the word out nationally, beyond just the Caloosahatchee River and the obvious problem areas. In the Keys we're not experiencing the same thing they are up there, but the potential for it to come our way keeps people paying attention, and we have the opposite problem too, not enough fresh water, because it's all being pushed out the wrong way instead of flowing naturally down to the Keys. If this were just a Florida problem, that would be one thing, but it's a national problem, and it matters to anyone with any interest in visiting Florida, and to the economy, since Florida punches above its weight compared to a lot of other states, with tourism and commercial fishing so dependent on the water. Getting a fair article out on a site like Free Range American, read all over the country and probably the world, is a big deal, and maybe that leads to coverage in outlets like the Wall Street Journal that brings real attention from people who have nothing to do with fishing, people who might visit Florida once every few years for something other than Disney World, and still want to feel sand between their toes and see clean water.
Matt Smythe: Especially because it's easy to get locked into the fishing community echo chamber. The fishing community, fly fishing especially, is saturated with causes worth our time and attention, but speaking only to that group is like preaching to the choir. Getting outside of that, and making people understand this goes beyond a pastime, that it's about livelihoods and the economy and how we handle the environment and find balance instead of just consuming resources without replenishing them, that's the real work.
Tom Rowland: There are a lot of issues out there, and to someone watching Asian carp invade their river in Kentucky, that's just as important as the Florida water crisis. The pebble mine is a bad deal too. You can be a downer about all of it, or you can be like Captains for Clean Water and keep pointing to solutions, because it doesn't mean it's over. Nature is amazing, and if you give it a chance, it will rebound and come back. That's what we have to do, give it a chance instead of stomping on it all the time.
Tom Rowland: Well, cool, man, I really appreciate you coming on, I've enjoyed talking with you, and I hope we can do something together sometime, maybe a movie script. I like the voice you write with, it's like you're talking to a friend, not overly polished, but it feels like you just sat down at the bar and somebody told you a great story. Compliments to you, that's the reason I reached out. Tell everybody where they can find your stuff, read your work, or watch your films.
Matt Smythe: My website is mattsmythe.com, and definitely check out Free Range American, at freerangeamerican.us. There's content going up daily, along with the Black Rifle Coffee podcast that goes with it. It's always a good read, we've got a lot of great content on there.
Tom Rowland: Awesome, man, thanks for talking, good to talk with you, I hope you can get back to your writing today. And for everything else, go see tomrowlandpodcast.com, you can find this and all of our other episodes with so many interesting people right there. That's it for today. Matt, thank you very much, we'll talk to you soon.
Matt Smythe: You got it. Thanks for having me on.
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