Briefly, we rise from our political stupor
One reason why no one pays any attention to what a candidate says on the issues is that no one believes they say what they think. This is cynical. And accurate. If you don’t recognize a platform as a jumble of marketing phrases meant to cobble together enough votes to win, you are not paying...
“Ageless athlete” profiles: inspiring or just sort of irritating?
You have emotions that arise so naturally, so spontaneously that they seem pure and unassailable and right. Justified. Nothing to be ashamed of. But life is rarely that clean and neat for very long. Sometimes emotions are strong and automatic and still you suspect that they are, well, suspect. You’re confused by how you feel,...
Flabby old heart no impediment to wrecking knees, hips
“We always worry about marathoners who are sort of dropping dead, if you will, and having a heart attack during the marathon,” says Dr. Davinder Jassal as he explains the purpose of his recent study and, simultaneously, gives us our favorite quote of the month. Jassal (an associate professor of medicine, radiology and physiology at...
Ahnu Mendocino Hiking Boots: Separation Anxiety
This story is about footwear. And emotion. It’s not about the passion young women supposedly feel for $450 stilettos. No. This is about the abiding, nuanced appreciation one feels for certain hiking boots. The ones that feel right from the first moment. The ones that reach out to you, that don’t build a bond so...
Hell’s troika stops Nyad
Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad dove into Cuban waters on Saturday with plans to walk up a Key West beach on Wednesday, her sixty-third birthday. Sadly, after covering about half the distance over 60 hours, she has climbed out of the water. This was Nyad’s fourth attempt. Last September, she covered 82 miles (in around 40...
Outdoor industry flexes its nicely toned muscles
Look who’s throwing its granola-fed weight around. The 4,000-member Outdoor Industry Association is threatening to pull an important trade show from Salt Lake City unless Utah stops its plans to horn in on millions of acres of federally protected lands. A lot of money and a lot of land is caught up in this debate....
Again: pack the essentials. And no more.
There are three dark emotions that can attend the end of any long hiking trip. The first is interpersonal: I swear I’ll never again set off into the woods with that whiner. The second is gear-related: how can someone in good conscience sell a tent/boots/shirt with seams that pop apart under my gentle/frantic/angry tugging? The...
Tent with a view
You might have a favorite campsite on a windswept precipice over the Pacific. Or a special, mosquito-net window on the Grand Canyon or the Chilkoot Trail. Very dramatic. But how pleasant is this scene of North Dakota badlands in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, with the Little Missouri flowing slowly under cloudy skies. This is a...
Same old
The odd thing about being off for a couple of weeks…truly and completely off, out-of-cell-coverage-and-forget-your-passwords off…is that you can return to find that nothing much has changed. Apparently there were sporting events in London, and occasional disasters. But otherwise, no surprise. For example, there’s this story from AARP on how half of all non-retired boomers...
