Shoulder Season 1: It’s soon time to hike
Ski season isn’t over, but the end is nigh. (Seasonally, of course. Also, existentially. If the world gets another few bad winters, the ski resort economy in some countries will be in serious trouble. Doubt us? Check this collection of abandoned lifts and dirt slopes.) So it’s time to think ahead. To hiking. Or at...
Time to Upgrade?
If you’ve been going outdoors over the past few decades—whether once a season or once a week—there’s a good chance you’ve already got the gear you need. And some extra stuff you picked up at garage and clearance sales. Maybe, with the advance of years, you decided to upgrade your sleeping pad to something a...
From Vanguard to Vanquished
Retirement is traumatic so this might seem a bit frivolous…but why do so many retirement-related ads and articles show old people living out of a van? Granted, today’s oldsters probably invented van-life. While “KampKars” and “land yachts” have been with us since the start of motorized travel, Boomers made cross-country treks in a small, self-contained...
Bests in show?
Writers sometimes excuse their laziest writing by labelling it service journalism. Other times, they will excuse their lazy research by calling it curatorial reportage (i.e., consolidating information from other published accounts). The following combines both of these lame gambits in a single flaming post. Despite its obvious limits, you might still find it useful. ...
Koreans love the outdoors like Americans love spectator sports
Twenty-five years ago, when Koreans were known for having the world’s longest work week (nominally six days, often longer), they still found time to get outdoors. Hiking clubs were a big deal. Camping was less popular because it requires a couple days of leisure in a row, but it was still popular. Over the...
People in glass lookouts shouldn’t throw the first stone
Sometimes that old wine just can’t be decanted into a new bottle. Case in point: you have some property near Yellowstone. You want to make some money off it, so you build high-end cabins. You put in wi-fi and a flat screen TV and queen beds—equipping them like a modern condo in downtown Seattle...
Ultralight in the ultra-cold?
Camping in summer is perfect: a chance to shake off the stale atmosphere in your (probably) air-conditioned home. You live simple, work hard, sleep well and wake up a little sore. And camping in winter seems deranged. Correction: winter camping in the north, or at altitude, seems mad. This is true when you’re twenty, and...
Keep the camping fire going over the winter
If you live at my latitude, these are the weeks hope, when every trip to the basement reminds you that the camping gear is still there, still not packed away for the season. Part of you wants to believe you might get out again this year, but you know the odds get slimmer with each...
More campsites opening in NYC’s “urban outback”
Spending the night outdoors in New York City doesn’t necessarily mean glamping on the “wraparound terrace of a penthouse suite” with scented candles. Or huddling under a bridge. You can actually pitch a tent and lay out your bedroll in the Gateway National Recreation Area, an expansive (26,000-acre) urban outback that’s spread across parts of...
Camping out in someone else’s garden: fake, irredeemably lame travel trend for boomers
Last month we reported on the rise of glamping—a conflation of “glamorous” and “camping” that makes us wince every time we write it. We were skeptical. Even dismissive. But then we looked at a few web sites and thought about it, and decided it might be a very acceptable way to...
Glamping: not glamorous, not camping – but hard to dismiss
Occasionally, one comes across a story on glamping, a portmanteau word combining glamour and camping. So, glamorous camping: boardwalks through the forest, spacious white safari tents with beds and plumbing, top-notch food cooked by a real chef—but with the scenery and silence of the wilderness. At first...
A nice bit of backwoods skunkworks
Over the past year, we’ve come across a couple of innovative projects—one was a documentary, the other a band’s throwback vinyl record—being funded through Kickstarter. Kickstarter, if you haven’t seen it, is worth a look. The web site says it’s the largest funding platform for creative...
