Cooped Up? Get Uncooped.

I ask because it seems like a lot of the people I know who are crazy about the outdoors were introduced to hiking, paddling, camping, etc. by their families. (I met a woman whose parents brought her on a Boundary Waters wilderness canoe trip when she was a month old!) As for me, well- my grandma, bless her, pitched a fit when she found out I was going on a Boundary Waters canoe trip with...

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There must be, because I have about a million sunset pictures clogging up my hard drive. Which is all well and good -they're beautiful. But what I want to know is: why, oh why, do I feel compelled to take multiple pictures of the same exact scene?

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First, a little background. When I was a teenager, I took trips through a wilderness adventure camp. One camp tradition relating to these trips was "trail notes." Before a group went on a long trip (30+ days), friends, family, and coworkers were invited to add small notes to a bag. Every morning of the trip, the group members got to read a note aloud. The notes usually consisted of cartoons, quotations, or good tidings.Anyway, on...

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I'm thrilled to be living in a small town in northern California. I love it here. But when I was going through some pictures from a road trip I took last summer, I found these shots of a teensy little town near Boulder, Colorado, and my heart goes ping and I find myself trying to figure out how to convince my surfer boyfriend we should move to the mountains.Then I remember that cute little mountain...

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We're not talking about "socks" and "potable water" here. We're talking about the things you always bring because they add something extra to your outdoors experience. You wouldn't die if you left them at home, but you would be bummed.For me, the top five essential nonessentials are1. Swiss Miss hot cocoa mix2. a journal and multiple pens (in case -horrors!- one runs out of ink)3. expedition-weight wool socks, so my perpetually freezing feet stay toasty at...

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Last night I watched 28 Days Later, an uber-creepy zombie flick. (Warning: spoilers ahead.) Some of the most striking images in the movie are in the opening minutes, when Jim, the protagonist, wakes from a coma and discovers that the hospital is deserted. He walks out into the streets of London and they are empty. If you've ever been to London, you know this is never the case, especially in the London Bridge area. How did...

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My best climbing buddy and I were once eating at Erbert & Gerbert's at midnight when we got to talking about dying. Specifically, dying outdoors. More specifically, dying while climbing. "I wouldn't mind freezing to death," I remarked through a mouthful of BLT sub.She concurred. We decided that a slow, agonizing demise by internal bleeding (induced by rockfall or, say, falling into a deep crevasse on a remote solo climb) would be the worst way to...

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A thought-provoking quote from High Exposures: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Other Unforgiving Places, by the renowned high-altitude filmmaker David Breashears:"I rounded out my reading with books about Rudolf Nureyev. I was thoroughly impressed by his grace, sense of craft, and dazzling skill. I was already beginning to look on climbing not just as a sport, but as a form of expression. The quality of the ascent was becoming as important to me as the...

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