Living in the mountains has opened up a whole array of new sports to me. Most recently, I ventured into paragliding. My friend Charlie lives in Frisco and is an expert paraglider. He often takes people on tandem rides: two people linked front-to-back with a
Our wild spaces can't take any more of our crap. During the 2018-19 Federal shutdown, severe staff reductions at our National Parks led to overflowing pit toilets and piles of human waste on the roadsides. When the parks reopened, the cleanup costs kneecapp
Smart? Check. Passionate? Check! Kind? Double check. A dog person? Triple check!!! Loves camping and hiking and climbing and trekking? (...chirping crickets...) Okay, look. If anyone is lucky enough to find the first four qualities in a potential partner
I've recently fallen in love with The Wild, a new podcast by wildlife researcher, conservationist, and educator Chris Morgan. His May 21 episode sat in my queue for a few days, though. I had a lot of stuff demanding my full attention: work deadlines,
With forests, shrubland, and grassland covering over half of the land area in the United States, it’s no wonder that we love getting out and exploring nature. But with these ecosystems comes the real danger of wildfires. A wildfire c
Everyone knows about packing out your trash, or what to do when nature calls in the wilderness. These are number one and number two (literally) in the leave-no-trace playbook for those of us who care about preservi
Have you ever experienced the thrill of finding a bone-white antler in the wild? My first find was about the size and shape of a church key can opener, probably from a yearling buck. I was over the moon, and I'm sure my seasoned hiking companions thought I was
Summer is prime time for hitting the trails and the waterways of America’s gorgeous backcountry. Which also means it’s prime time for running into the critters, large and small, for whom that backcountry is hom
We went to Big Bend so frequently that the trips all blur together in my memory. The multitudes of javelina -- small, blind pigs -- that were always running across the r
