(Above: An illustration in the first of the Letters From Noah shows a watercolor he painted from a street scene in Guyana, South America.)

By Randi Bjornstad

Ever long for the days when you opened the mailbox and actually took out a letter from someone you had hoped to hear from? It doesn’t happen very often anymore, but now there is a way that can provide that experience once a month, a letter chock full of personal musings and accompanying watercolor paintings about places and sights from all over the world.

Meet Noah Strycker and his latest venture, Letters from Noah. And that doesn’t mean turning on a computer and reading something online. It really does mean opening an envelope addressed to you, taking out a sheet of letter quality paper, illustrated with his original watercolor art, and reading about his latest travel adventures, .

Birds, such as this toucan, have been a touchstone of Noah Strycker’s art for years

Strycker is a world traveler, travel writer, and artist. He’s also a well-known “birder” — while not yet into his 30s, he set the world record for the Big Year of Birding in 2015, traveling the world and cataloguing views of 6,042 of the estimated 10,365 bird species known at the time (and incidentally becoming the first person ever to record half of the world’s known birds in one year). Not only that, but his trek took him to 41 countries and all seven continents.

“My idea is kind of from different things that I like — travel, writing, and artwork — combined with the fact that hardly anyone seems to get letters anymore,” Strycker said in a recent telephone interview. “The logistics of what I’m doing is to write a letter every month based on where I’ve been traveling, do artwork to illustrate it, send it to a printer back in Eugene and have them print it and mail it out to the subscribers.”

As for subscribers to Letters from Noah, Strycker says that more than 300 people signed up in just the first couple of weeks after he first announced the project in December 2025. The January 2026 issue actually is in print now and draws on Strycker’s travels to Guyana, located in the northeast corner of South America’s rainforest, with its never-ending jungles, anteaters, howler monkeys, exotic birds, and a waterfall five times higher than Niagara Falls.

People can subscribe any time, by going online to lettersfromnoah.com, and once signed up will begin receiving their letters the following month, reflecting what he has seen, heard, experienced, and thought about during his travels.

As he wrote in the first letter in January 2026, “Of all Guyana’s sights, I’ve been most impressed by the rainforest itself — an enormous and mysterious living thing. Trying to comprehend its scale one morning, I thought maybe this is what it’s like to be an ant in my garden at home. Then I wondered: What must it feel like to be an ant in Guyana? From here, the jungle stretches all the way across the Amazon.”

Strycker’s many stops during 2026 will include Norway, Antarctica, Indonesia, and his goal is to set foot on all seven continents during the year, although he said his monthly letters — written on location and painted on location — might include one or two places from the past.

Although many of his travels have involved birdwatching, Letters from Noah will not necessarily be bird-focused, but will include “national and cultural aspects, nature, wildlife, and cultural attractions.”

He’s not worried about running out of subject matter. “I can keep up this pace at least for the next couple of years,” Strycker said.

Each letter that subscribers receive will be printed on both sides of an 8.5 x 11-inch page, “with the text flowing around maps, paintings of the landscapes, animals, birds, maps, and other cultural scenes,”  he said. “I carry a watercolor pad, pencils, and a watercolor set. Instead of using a phone camera, I do field sketching to capture the details of what I’m seeing.”

In some places he visits, he will be one of the travelers. In others, Strycker will be leading the tours. The bottom line for his new venture is simple: “I am really excited about this.”

In addition to this new project, Strycker is author of several books about his travels, including one, A Birder’s Atlas of the World, set for publication in September by National Geographic.

Information and subscriptions: lettersfromnoah.com