Dear Readers, As I continue to try to find a work life balance that works for this blog, as well as the time to keep original content coming, please check out the podcast I’ve uploaded on how nature helps to keep us healthy and well. If you’re a smartphone user click on the menu link…
Tag: Health and Wellness
How to Interpret Dreams
Last night I had the strangest dream. I was driving in an SUV, ran over a lovely flower bed on some private land and momentarily got stuck in a man-made trough or pond. A trough the size of a coy pond but square in shape. I got out, but as I did, another vehicle coming…
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…
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,…
In the beginning…
First Blog Post! It’s humbling to think as I sit here and write this that I’m participating in a tradition that includes such names as Wendell Berry, Aldo Leopold, Annie Dillard, Emerson and Thoreau. And while I would not include the quality or import of my writing in such esteemed company, here I am…