Why are the outdoors and so many of its brands so white? In this essay I ask those questions, and try to provide a couple of answers. (This is a repost from 2019)
Tag: Community
Walking Through it All: Reviewing Ben Montgomery’s ‘Grandma Gatewood’s Walk’
In Ben Montgomery’s eye-opening profile, Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail, readers encounter the real life folk heroin Emma Gatewood. On the trail, her story is legend; and it takes on such proportions for a plethora of reasons, some of which have nothing to do with hiking. …
Adventure Time: Redefining Adventure for Everyone
When modern readers think of or read about adventure they’re probably reading about epic journeys of discovery, or thinking about trail blazers who risked life and limb in search of an ultimate prize: Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer and his team of four were the first to make it to the geographic South pole in…
The Stories We Tell Ourselves: A Meditation on Frost’s Two Roads
(A quick note: while the gender of the speaker remains undetermined, I sometimes use the masculine for the sake of simplicity and consistency. It seems easier than having to repeatedly use “the speaker”, or singular they, or worse, “him/her”.) Ask anyone to create a list of poems they’ve read, know or remember from school, and…
Dirtbag Dreams: Fantasy vs Reality
(Cover Image: Fred Beckey) Virtually anyone who climbs, has ever picked up a climbing magazine, seen Reel Rock, or any YouTube video on climbing, knows the term “dirtbag”. The general public uses this term as one of derision to describe someone who might otherwise be a lowlife, good-for-nothing bum; but in the climbing community one…
Mountain Buddha: The Origin Story
I never pictured myself as a blogger. After graduate school, most of the writing I did, when I did it, revolved around literary criticism. That was the original plan: get an MA, work as an adjunct for one, maybe two years, then apply to a Ph.D. program somewhere to finish up my education and get…
A Man of Leisure’s Brief Guide to Understanding Wellness and Productivity
Change. Life’s great constant. Humans possess a remarkable ability to shape their circumstances in life. While there is no doubt that there exists a great many factors in life over which people have no control—circumstances of birth, the past, what others think, life and death, catching up with the Joneses—there also exists a good many…
Why Climbing Matters
As a brief note, this article often uses the term climbing in a broad sense to include everything from rock climbing to mountaineering and hiking. As I rediscover climbing in middle-age, I find that I’m teaching myself something new all over again. Climbing! Whether rocks or mountains, humble boulders and hills in your backyard forests,…
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