Category: Places and Traveling
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Long Trails
The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. I was curious if someone has made a list of long-distance hiking trails, and of course the answer is yes. Worldwide, there are 46 trails longer than 1,000 kilometers that are passing through mostly wild areas with…
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The Silent Men Who Do Things
Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there’s nothing else to gaze on, Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore, Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon, Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar? Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,…
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Klaus Dierks
While doing some searches on Namibia for a previous post, I came across the website of Klaus Dierks, a civil engineer and politician during the first years of Namibia’s independence. His life appears to have been adventurous in the best possible sense. He was born in Nazi Germany, grew up…
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Happiness Only Real When Shared
Interstate 80 crosses the Sierra Nevada at Donner Pass. One semi-trailer truck follows the next in a near-continuous train, connecting the mighty economy of California with those of the states further East. I was travelling on a different kind of road. The Pacific Crest Trail is a long distance hiking…
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Two Good Lakes
I like people but I don’t like crowds. I don’t actually mind crowds either if they don’t cause congestion. Some crowding in a subway station is fine as long as it doesn’t result in me not getting on a train. I don’t mind busy city streets as long as I…
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One Utopia
Ken Ilgunas’ utopia for North America: A stable population of 100 million humans (a mostly arbitrary number), mostly clustered in metropolitan areas, eating the best, juiciest lab-grown sirloins, enjoying lives of meaning and leisure, with lots of solar panels and pagan orgies. Now that the land is free of domesticated…
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Blitz Tourism
We were vacationing in the Austrian alps. Our cabin was at the end of a small, winding road, on the edge of a pasture with views of the valley and the mountains beneath. When we were not learning how to milk a cow or how to use a scythe, we…
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Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold Her hardest hue to hold Her early leaf’s a flower But only holds an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf So Eden sank to grief So dawn goes down to day Nothing gold can stay. Robert Frost
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Brutal Journey
The Narváez expedition departed Spain in 1527 to explore Florida. Things went wrong and only four out of 600 men made it back to Europe after trekking through what today is Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Mexico for eight years, much of it while being enslaved by Indian tribes. Paul Schneider’s…
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Against Binoculars
I have nothing against birds. Unlike birdwatchers, I’m more interested in their personalities than their looks. I’m incapable of watching them and not ascribing a personality to each. Bluejays remind me of car salesmen: Loud, aggressive, flashy suits, curious in an intrusive way. Even though birds amuse me, I never…
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Gangerl
Off the dirt track crossing a deserted mountain pass in northwestern Namibia, we encountered an ancient Land Rover stuck in the sand. Next to it stood its three passengers, desperate for someone to find and rescue them. Even before I was born, my father had taken every opportunity to go…
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Peace Comes Dropping Slow
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows I will have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping…
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To See The Land I Love
Now as the train bears west, Its rhythm rocks the earth, And from my Pullman berth I stare into the night While others take their rest. Bridges of iron lace, A suddenness of trees, A lap of mountain mist All cross my line of sight, Then a bleak wasted place,…
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The Woods are Lovely, Dark, and Deep
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it’s queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The…
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Bears
Talk with backpackers anywhere in the Western United States, and eventually bears will come up. I’ve come across bears a few times and they now make me less anxious than they used to. I knew all along that that black bears aren’t dangerous to hikers who behave sensibly. After discovering…
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Bicycle Conversion
Leaving a hardware store, I saw an e-bike unlike any I had seen before chained to a lamppost. It was a standard road bike with two motors added to the frame. They were connected to the rear wheel hub with separate bike chains. The battery was housed in a hard…
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Into Alaska
It’s easy to be cynical about YouTube and those who create videos for the platform to make money. Chasing clicks and making videos that make you feel good after having watched them seems to be incompatible. However, there are some channels that redeem the platform. The self-videoing adventurers I admire…
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Ultralight
The amount of time I spend researching backpacking gear, reading blogs and reviews and watching YouTube videos about tarps, camping stoves, backpacks, sleeping quilts and footwear is comparable to the time I actually spend using the gears outdoors. I find this embarrassing. I also know I’m not the only one.…
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The Brotherhood of Mt Shasta
As you hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada, for many days you catch glimpses of Mt Shasta between the trees. As you drive through the empty plains of Northern California, it beckons on the horizon. As you take a flight into San Francisco crossing the Sierra Nevada,…
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A Tall Ship
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, And a grey mist on the sea’s…
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Trains
Trains are different in America. Like so many other things (people, portion sizes, cars, ambition), they’re bigger here than they were in Europe. The part of the United States where I live and that I’m most familiar with, which is California and the western states, the most frequently encountered kind…
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Not Man the Less, but Nature More
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more George Byron
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The River: Drowning
Most winters, the ice was strong enough for skating, as long as you avoided the fast flowing sections where it was much thinner. As a safety precaution, or so I told myself, I would first go out on a sled, reasoning that it’s impossible to fall through the ice that…
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The River: Boats
For Christmas, I wanted a kayak. For months, I had been poring over the catalogs of various suppliers, comparing specifications and accessories and looking at the pictures of people in kayaks exploring wild places. Finally Christmas eve arrived. The bell rang, the doors to the drawing room opened, and there…
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The River: Fishing
Beneath the surface, there were trout. On hot days they were suspended in the water without moving. My brother, for a few years, was obsessed by fishing and would frequently bring home trout for us to eat. In his room, he had a box with what to seven year old…
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The Gospel of Nature
John Burroughs published Time and Change in 1912. Hewas a well known naturalist, corresponding with Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir and others. He has been largely forgotten since, even though much his nature writing is still relevant and insightful today. The following is from The Gospel of Nature, a chapter of…
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Builds Character
If a person who has not had enough exercise attempts to backpack, then he will find the going difficult. He might think, “I sweat, I get out of breath, I’m out of shape.” But he is wrong to think the tribulation is uniquely his. Everyone sweats; everyone pants for breath.…
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Tracking
Excerpts from Jim Harrison’s third-person autobiography Tracking, which appeared in his collection The Summer He Didn’t Die. About rivers: The last few days in the north he spent most of the time in the woods after packing was done. The water was warmish in August and he was able to…
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How Not to Eat Well
People worry a lot about food. Is it authentic? Is it healthy? Is it local? Is it organic? Is it sustainable? Is it The Best? You can see them at the grocery store, checking the labels. I do it myself. The most basic information on a food label is the…
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Map of California Fossil Sites
I made an interactive map of California fossil sites based on data by Don Kenney.
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The First Snowfall
The snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white. Every pine and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch deep with pearl.…
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The Tickle Trunk
Our canoe was made by the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation from heavy-duty aluminum and weighted 75 pounds. On account of it being late summer, some of the river passages had low water levels and were muddy and we often had to get out of the canoe to push or pull…
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Tree House
A tree house, a free house, A secret you and me house, A high up in the leafy branches Cozy as can be house. A street house, a neat house, Be sure and wipe your feet house Is not my kind of house at all – Let’s go live in…
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Yonder Blue Ridge
May your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and only slightly uphill. May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God’s dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie, may the…
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Jim Harrison
I’ve been reading a lot of Jim Harrison lately. It’s an infatuation with his work that began a few years ago but has now reached new heights. I have purchased all of his prose and some of his books of poems. Four of the last five books I’ve read are…
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Desert Tales
The number of weird things that happen to a person in the wild is directly proportional to how much time that person spends in the wild Steven Rinella: American Buffalo Desert solitaire I was backpacking through the landscapes of arid southern California while reading Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. One…
Nehaveigur 