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If not now, when?

If not now, when?

photos and story by Stephanie Vermillion January 09, 2025

The stabs of snow felt like an acupuncture session gone wrong, but I couldn’t let the pain, or my frozen fingers, distract me. I needed to pitch my only protection from the blinding and intensifying snowstorm — a cherry-red tent. Yet my frozen “campground,” the Greenland Ice Sheet, made things difficult. 

“Push the tent stake into the ice, then twist,” my expedition guide, Klaus Larsen, yelled over deafening wind gusts. “Twist harder!”

I cursed under my labored breath, used all my force to crank the metal screw into pure ice, then questioned the life decisions that led to me spending a night on the world’s second-largest ice sheet in a sub-freezing snowstorm. 

They were the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Dark figure stands against a sky full of stars in Atacama Desert, Chile
Atacama Desert, Chile

 

That Greenland camping trip became one of many experiences I’d later write about for my debut book for National Geographic, 100 Nights of a Lifetime: The World’s Ultimate Adventures After Dark, which published Dec. 3. It’s the kind of project I’d once dreamed about as a University of Dayton journalism student. It’s also the kind of project I’d nearly missed out on after choosing a safe career over the path I knew was right.

In the fall of 2007, I lugged my life up to the fifth floor of Founders Hall ready to embark on my dream career of travel writing. I had big goals and boundless energy. During the four years that followed, I backpacked the Great Smoky Mountains with UD’s Outdoor Adventure Club, climbed my way up the Flyer News chain of command, co-hosted television shows on Flyer TV, and spent summers studying and volunteering abroad everywhere from Ireland to Morocco. 

The latter was particularly special because it unlocked a new hobby: stargazing. On a camping trip to the Sahara Desert during my junior year summer in Morocco, I caught a meteor shower and admired the shimmery core of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. I signed up for my first astronomy class that fall.

I’ve since spent countless nights skipping sleep for stars. 

When I graduated in 2011, the journalism industry had reached a tipping point (or so I was told). The years following the 2008 economic recession brought layoffs, magazine closures and meager pay. Countless people, including a Wall Street Journal editor I met during a college-newspaper conference in NYC, told me to consider a steadier future. “Journalism is dying,” he’d warned during our 15-minute mentorship session. “My advice: Choose another career.” Unfortunately,
I listened.

I spent six years climbing the ladder at PR agencies, attempting to satiate that
wanderlust I’d developed while studying abroad with a meager 10 vacation days annually. I didn’t even consider that my office could be the world, not a fluorescent-lit cubicle, until my now-husband, Frank, and I moved to the New York City area in 2015. 

Colorful night sky in at the Seljalandsfoss Waterfall in South Iceland
Seljalandsfoss Waterfall, South Iceland

 

Since I couldn’t jet set as much as I wanted, I mixed and mingled with other NYC-based globetrotters. I forged friendships with creatives pursuing unconventional, passion-fueled careers: adventure bloggers, travel writers, professional photographers and documentary filmmakers. These friends pushed me to consider my own future.

I began pitching stories, photo essays and films from past and local travels to editors on the side of my day job. My inbox overflowed with rejections, but a few early acceptances kept me going, as did rediscovering that zest for life I hadn’t felt since my college summers abroad. 

After three years of progressively successful side-hustling, I knew it was time to pursue my dream full-force. Unfortunately, this milestone coincided with, and was largely accelerated by, the worst tragedy of my life.

In July 2018, after a five-year battle with cancer, my father, Don Vermillion, a former UD professor, passed away. I thought we’d have more time together — we had a family safari to see the wildebeest migration in Tanzania set for that October — and I learned the hard way that time is never guaranteed. I eventually found solace in knowing my dad lived life to the fullest. Inspired by the stories from his glossy National Geographic magazine collection, my dad traveled far and adventured wide in his 68 years, summiting high peaks and reaching far-flung corners of our planet — bonding with people from all walks of life along the way. He put it all out there and left this world with no regrets. It was time I did the same. 

I quit my job in October 2018 and set out on the career I’d once dreamt about from my Founders — then Marycrest, then Lowes Street — perch. 

Since that life-changing decision to leave my 9-to-5 job, I’ve carved out a career covering my passions — outdoor adventure, night-sky tourism, wildlife conservation and culture — for publications like National Geographic, Travel & Leisure, Outside Magazine and Vogue. With it has come the chance to not only travel to far-flung corners of our planet but bring readers along with me. I’ve also learned how travel can help, or hurt, the planet and people. Because of that, I now use my platform to report on experiences that support communities and conservation initiatives, because travel done well can lead to real and lasting change.

Snow-covered mountain at Torres Del Paine National Park, Chile
Torres Del Paine National Park, Chile

 

In April 2022, I accepted an invite to be the first journalist to experience Panamá’s new sustainable and grant-based tourism initiative. It’s a network that connects travelers with Indigenous and rural communities that want travelers but haven’t had the means to welcome them — until now. On this trip, I traveled far off the grid for a week of rafting rivers via traditional tethered-stick balsa rafts and tracking endangered sea turtles with Indigenous conservationists. 

The following year found me deep in the jungles of Ecuador, where I schlepped through the boot-sucking mud at night with local biologist guides. I reported on the Amazon rainforest’s first canopy crane, a new project that takes travelers above the treetops, for National Geographic. The majority of Amazonian animals live in the canopy, and this 150-foot crane, largely funded by tourism dollars, is open to scientists for unparalleled research opportunities, too.

Months later, I sought culture-meets-adventure stories by solo backpacking
from sheep farm to sheep farm in South Greenland — an experience that saw me trekking alongside iceberg-dotted waterways, then spending afternoons and evenings helping the Greenlandic Inuit community with frenetic sheep herding before all-night northern lights. 

These experiences and countless more — from twilight jaguar-tracking with conservationists in the Brazilian Pantanal to sunrise hiking on the Great Wall of China and, of course, camping on the Greenland Ice Sheet in a snowstorm — have turned the world into my office. It’s a dream that became possible the second I trusted in myself and answered the life-changing question:
If not now, when?   


A version of this article appears in print in the Winter 2024-45 University of Dayton Magazine, Page 34. EXPLORE THE ISSUEMORE ONLINE


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My debut book, 100 Nights of a Lifetime: The World's Ultimate Adventures After Dark, published by National Geographic, spotlights beloved and lesser-known twilight marvels, from aurora hunting by dog sled to firefly festivals.

Woman of grace