Tree People
Last weekend, I was on my way to go camping in the San Gabriel Mountains just north of L.A., when I saw signs on the Angeles Crest Highway that said, simply, Tree People. So, of course, I followed them. I found lots of people and, yes, lots of trees. Fifty…
Chicks with Picks
Photo Chris Gills Chicks with Picks, which offers ice climbing clinics for women (led by women) just announced a scholarship fund in memory of Karen McNeill, a guide who disappeared near the south summit of Alaska’s Mount Foraker last May. According to Chicks, “Of special significance are [Karen’s] myriad of…
I Hear Country in LA
Given the slick and shlocky stuff that pervades the radio, music that goes by the name “country” is likely to elicit only rolled eyeballs and guttural groans. But it’s worth remembering that country music isn’t all kitsch. Some musicians (I think of Johnny Cash and Gillian Welch) manage country music’s…
Dispatch from LA
Maybe this is where Paris Hilton lives When I moved out to Los Angeles three weeks ago, some of my friends were puzzled. I am not a city girl. I don’t like clubs, or fashion, or glitz, or glamour. I sleep in my sleeping bag even at home, and I…
On Walden Pond
Walden Pond I was swimming today at Walden, the pristine pond in Concord, Massachusetts that inspired Henry David Thoreau, when another New England nature writer, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Mary Oliver, came to mind. When I was younger and spent more time at the pond, I liked to memorize and…
Now We're Cooking…
For the faithful converts of ultralight backpacking, the alcohol stove might just be the Holy Grail. Almost all of the long-distance hikers I know have long-since traded their clumsy Whisper Lites and wasteful Pocket Rockets for the stove that you can make in your basement. The alcohol stove goes by…
It's a Brave New Backcountry
Edward Abbey I sometimes wonder what Edward Abbey would say if he could see Appalachian Trail thru-hikers resting cozily in their sleeping bags at night with the stars and moon above, tapping away on their tiny PocketMail devices so that they can post their daily blogs. So far from the…
Mountain Clubs or Country Clubs?
Unlike bigger mountains out west, the craggy granite outcroppings of New Hampshire’s White Mountains and Vermont’s Green Mountains are within a day’s drive of about 75 million people. Each summer, mountain clubs and other non-profits get to work educating hikers about Leave No Trace and the responsibility of land stewardship.…
Grandma Gets Mean
Grandma Gatewood, courtesy of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy I used to hear that for every woman on the Appalachian Trail, there were twenty men. That number is probably an exageration, but if you ask the women who walk the 2200-mile trail from Georgia to Maine, many of them will tell…
