Landers is top choice

Rich Landers, The Spokesman-Review outdoors editor, has received the top award given by the Outdoor Writers Association of America for all writing, photography, TV and radio entries in the organization’s 2007 Excellence in Craft contests.

Landers won three first- and three second-place awards in six writing and photography categories during the OWAA national conference last month in Roanoke, Va.

Then, from among the winning entries in all 19 categories, Landers’ was singled out as the best of the best with the President’s Award for a column written upon his return from salmon fishing in Alaska in July of 2006.

The column, titled “Reality Check,” only hinted at a week of great fishing for king salmon before focusing on the poignant scene at the Dillingham airport at the trip’s end. Landers described how exuberant anglers were humbled in a small waiting room with the first group of young native national guardsmen called away from the salmon runs to be sent from the Alaska tundra to the desert of Iraq.

“You can imagine how difficult it was to choose one entry from all the outstanding ones that took first-place awards,” said OWAA President Jim Low of Jefferson City, Mo.

“(Landers’) was among several that were, in my estimation, so close to perfection that the difference hardly mattered. “Reality Check” came out on top because it tugged at the heartstrings without being maudlin. Excellent work!”