Thursday, February 9, 2012
There are few things I love more than cold, snowy mountains in winter. It almost doesn't matter what sort of ski I use to access them—alpine, alpine touring, skate, or classic cross-country. I love them all. Last week, I felt particularly grateful for the fact that my parents taught me to ski as a kid, because it allows me easy access to remarkably beautiful places. The latest was Whitefish, Montana, a town of about 8,000 near Glacier National Park. I came to see the town's winter carnival and the Black Star Barter, in which locals trade goods or talents (like a Volkswagen bus or fire-spinning performances) for a year's worth of beer. But I also took the opportunity to ski Whitefish Mountain Resort, known for its glades and utter dearth of crowds. Just as promised, I had gorgeous untracked lines in the trees all to myself. On another day, I cross-country skied a six-mile loop in Glacier National Park, spotting moose and mountain lion tracks along the way. Lovely, silent bliss.
Friday, January 20, 2012
AN ODE TO PAPER
At the moment, I am neck-deep in a story that I very much care about. I care enough that it's difficult to write. So after an inordinate amount of procrastination, I decided to try something I rarely do: I printed out my notes, turned off my computer and my phone, and I got out the scissors, tape, and legal pad. One of the weirder reasons I became a writer was I always loved the way handwritten words looked on a page. Now, after years of writing as many as ten pages a day in journals, my handwriting is an angular scrawl at best. Still, there's something strangely satisfying about working with a good old fashioned pen and paper, actually physically moving around the paragraphs and ideas until they start to make a little bit of sense. I also find the luxury of three computer-free hours in the middle of a workday remarkably useful. There seems to be increasing evidence that tweets, emails, Facebook posts, and other quick online distractions clog our brains and prevent the kind of concentration needed to write the sort of essay I am attempting. If nothing else, pull out the pen for the sheer satisfaction of creating something tangible, even if it's as impermanent and dispensable as a slip of paper scrawled with ink.
Monday, January 9, 2012
It seems deadlines have a way of congregating around the holidays and this year was no exception. I am finally emerging from the madness and am happy to report a few fun trips on the horizon, including France, Switzerland, and Alaska in March. I also have a story out in the winter issue of National Parks magazine—a fun historical piece about the Wright brothers and the invention of the airplane. Their story is more amazing than I realized. Imagining clinging to one of those insect-like contraptions helped put my own fear of flying into perspective. Wilbur Wright died in 1912, but amazingly Orville Wright lived long enough to see Chuck Yaeger break the sound barrier and to watch passenger jets flying right over his head. Every human flying machine ever made has incorporated concepts pioneered by these two humble brothers from Ohio. Read the full story here.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Rejoice, winter is officially here! I've already logged my first epic powder day, and fat flakes are wafting outside my office window as I write this. My latest story appears particularly relevant at such a moment: a round-up of the nine best winter adventures lodges in the January issue of Outside. Read the story here and start packing the powder boards.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
WEEKEND PHOTO
This is in the name of work: testing backpacks in Canyonlands National Park.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
My latest big story just came out in the December issue of Outside: "The Year of Giving Adventurously." I wrote about 25 inspiring and innovative organizations, from one that educates Rwandan victims of rape—and their children—to another that distributes bikes as vehicles for change in the third world. Plus: how to vet organizations before you give them your dinero and five innovators in the worlds of social and environmental change, the latter written by other writers. Read the full story here.
Monday, November 14, 2011
On Thursday evening, Andrew and I pulled up to the Bullet Canyon Trailhead just as a pumpkin moon rose over Cedar Mesa—perhaps not the ideal time to arrive at a trailhead. I'll admit I had second thoughts when I saw the snow on the side of the road and felt the nose-numbing 30-degree breeze. But once we started hiking down the canyon in the moonlight, my reservations evaporated like the steam of my breath. This area of Utah is a trove of deep, gorgeous sandstone canyons and 700-plus-year-old Puebloan ruins. And in mid-November, there was hardly a soul there. We camped and hiked for two nights and discovered countless ruins, most not even marked on the map. Meanwhile, it had just rained so the puddles were full, the last of the asters were blooming, and the cottonwoods were in full autumn regalia. This is just one of the reasons why I love living in the Southwest—the fact that there are still wild places to explore right under our noses.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Good news: Late last week, the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation announced the recipients of the annual Lowell Thomas travel journalism awards...and I was one of them. I won the bronze Grand Award for Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year, a great honor for which I'm extremely grateful. Rick Steves won gold and Andrew McCarthy won silver. Big congratulations to the other winners, including a few I know: freelance writer Andy Isaacson (photo illustration of travel and cultural tourism), Outside senior editor Abe Streep (travel coverage in other magazines), and author Julian Smith (travel book).
Saturday, November 5, 2011
My latest story was just posted to National Geographic Adventure's website: this year's Ultimate Adventure Bucket List. It was an enormous but fun project, in which I interviewed 20 illustrious adventure athletes, from snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler to legendary surfer Layne Beachley, about their wildest, no-expense-barred fantasy trips. It was an exercise in imagination, and these dreamers delivered. I also asked each for a great bucket-list trip we mortals could do. The result is almost certain to dangerously stoke your wanderlust. Read with caution...
Monday, October 31, 2011
NEW GALLERY!
A brand-new slide show of photos from my recent canyoneering trip in southern Utah! Scroll over the right or left side of the photo and white arrows will appear.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
A NEW KIND OF TURTLE HUNTING
The surface of Magdalena Bay was mirror-still at 7:30 in the morning, when I climbed aboard a fisherman's panga and zipped up my life jacket. As we sped toward the nets we'd dropped the day before, I steeled myself against the breeze and scanned the water for dolphins. It was my last chance to see the work of Grupo Tortuguero, a small community-run Baja California Sur conservation organization, in action.
I watched as Nolberto and Jorge pulled the net onto the boat in silence, hoping to find their target: a sea turtle. "Tortuga!" Jorge suddenly exclaimed, as a green turtle, about the diameter of a large pizza, sputtered to the surface. It was a beautiful creature, only about 15 years old—a whippersnapper in turtle terms—and they placed it right next to my feet in the bottom of the boat. It seemed remarkably calm as I eyed it curiously, tenderly.
I was participating in a new project developed by Red Sustainable Tourism, which connects community-based conservation groups on the Baja peninsula with tourist volunteers. The people who run this particular group were former turtle poachers, even renowned turtle cooks, who had the vision to see that magnificent ancient turtle species were deteriorating far too fast. As a visitor, I helped weigh and measure the turtle's carapace, then it was tagged before we let it swim away. The data we collected is used to help track turtle populations, inform policy makers, and even contribute to studies by NOAA.
But the three-day trip was also a remarkable experience for the setting itself. This remote area on the Pacific side of the Baja Peninsula has some 93 square miles of mangroves, which provide millions of dollars worth of services to fisheries, not to mention spectacular bird habitat. We saw veritable conventions of herons and pelicans in the trees. I also camped on a remote island, ate home-cooked Mexican food, and spotted families of dolphins swimming a mere 30 feet offshore. One particularly memorable highlight: walking in solitude down a seemingly endless stretch of Pacific beach.
Friday, October 14, 2011
FIVE DAYS IN ESCALANTE
Last week, I almost considered packing up a carload of books, renting a double-wide in the middle of the desert, and simply checking out for a while. Not because my life sucks. On the contrary. I had just finished a five-day canyoneering trip on the border of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Unbeknownst to the masses of tourons in Zion and Bryce, this area is gorgeous and overlooked. Part of that owes to its rugged nature. These are some of the last-mapped lands in the Southwest, creased with deep chasms and subject to unforgiving extremes—flash floods, lightening storms, searing heat, and devastating cold. Let's just say that there aren't a lot of neat trails and handy Park Service signs out there.
Enter Rick Green, a top canyoneering guide for Excursions of Escalante whom I've known for years. He invited me and a small selection of other previous clients on an epic trip to a series of challenging canyons. We backpacked about three miles to a ledge overlooking the Escalante River, set up camp, and took four more days to explore the intricacies of these seldom-seen capillaries.
Our hairiest objective came along on Day 3: Chop Rock, a notorious chasm feared not only for its hefty 4CIVR rating but also for a tragedy that occurred there years ago—two canyoneers got stuck in a pool of freezing water under a logjam and died. Unnerving.
The first 170-foot rappel into the canyon was the easy part. Much of it involved swimming, sometimes in oxbowed narrows so tall they were nearly dark. Occasionally I was up to my neck in water with cliffs a mere 12 inches from my face. There were plenty of adrenaline-spiking moves, from stemming 20 feet off the deck to chimneying 25 feet down to water then swimming under a logjam in a canyon that, at higher water, can only accommodate a head. Without a helmet. It was a memorable adventure, not least for its stunning and imaginative landscapes—swirls of rock, deep potholes, stone waterslides, and shoulder-width slots stretching hundreds of feet high. To borrow an Ed Abbey line, it tested a woman's credulity.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
FUNNY STORY ON THE WAY TO MEXICO CITY
I always groan when I see that my flight is a turbo prop. Inconveniently, I have a mild fear of flying in which sudden turbulence spurs gratuitous shots of adrenaline. I've tried to reason with myself, to no effect. I've concluded that it's permanently lodged in my reptilian brain, so I simply deal.
Yesterday, I was flying serenely between Durango and Phoenix when the plane suddenly dropped and my hands flew to the armrests. The man next to me offered his hand to hold. Though the moment of panic had passed, it seemed so lovely I didn't want to turn him down. So there we were, holding hands, a nice icebreaker. I asked what he did for a living.
"I'm an actor," he said.
"Oh, what kind of acting do you do, like theater or films?" I asked.
"Mostly films."
"Cool. I don't have a TV and don't really watch movies. I like them though." He asked me about what I do and living in Durango.
"Well, were you in any films I might know about?" I finally asked.
"Have you ever seen Lord of the Rings?"
"I know that one! I even saw it but I was looking through my hands most of the time." I must sound like a complete moron. "Who were you?"
"I was one of the hobbits, Frodo's friend. Sam." He did seem a bit familiar.
I had an agreeable conversation with this guy, who had been in Durango shooting a film for a friend. After we landed, he said his name was Sean Astin, nice to meet you, have a good trip. Waiting for my next flight, I idly Googled him and it turns out he was the lead in Goonies (never saw it, clearly woefully undereducated) and Rudy, which I watched far too many times on the crew bus in college. I held hands with Rudy! Sean said it was refreshing to meet someone so thoroughly unplugged from TV. "You're rare," he told me. Is that code for extremely weird?
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
NEW STORY IN NATIONAL PARKS MAGAZINE
My most recent story: a feature on the founders of the National Parks Conservation Association in National Parks magazine. This was an unusual assignment for me. The subjects, visionary conservationists Robert Sterling Yard and Stephen Mather, also the founding director of the National Park Service, are long dead, so I relied on books, letters, and descendants' testimonies. It almost felt like archaeology, and I loved it. These men may be forgotten, but their hard work and vision established an important American institution—the national parks—and a model for the rest of the world to follow. Yard and Mather, best friends, were also wonderfully unusual and, at times, eccentric characters. Read the story here.
Monday, September 12, 2011
TALE OF TWO WEEKENDS
After a summer full of travels, I finally had two weekends close to home. One of the things I love most about living in the West: I can go from hiking through alpine wildflowers near a forgotten 19th-century mining town to wandering among sagebrush beneath towering red monoliths in a matter of days. For Labor Day, Andrew and I went up to Silverton, where he owns an old Victorian that has become my refuge over the years. We schlepped up to Silver Lake to poke about its old mining ruins, bushwhacked up to 13,000-foot Whitehead Peak, and tiptoed across streams and through wildflowers to Highland Mary Lakes. This weekend, in Moab, I discovered the Hidden Valley Trail, which leads up a cliff band and into a valley flanked by terracotta cliffs. We had it all to ourselves.