Fellow hikers, does this sound familiar? I have certainly been there. Usually I love hiking. Being outdoors, observing the plants and animals, pondering the geology and topography – these things just make me happy. But occasionally I find myself on a hike that I’m not really enjoying in the moment. Maybe the weather is miserable…
Category: Wild
Quotes: Set Points from the Natural World
“Our nervous systems are built to resonate with set points derived from the natural world.” – Florence Williams, The Nature Fix
Hikes: Elliott State Forest, Oregon
Over the weekend we went hiking in the Elliott State Forest. Taking a break from normal life to get some exercise, look at some exceedingly tall trees, and marvel at the lush environment here did us both much good. We walked along an old overgrown road which made for a nice walk up along the…
Quotes: Nature for Calm and Focus
“Compared with people who have lousy window views, those who can see trees and grass have been shown to recover faster in hospitals, perform better in school, and even display less violent behavior in neighborhoods where it’s common. Such results jibe with experimental studies of the central nervous system. Measurements of stress hormones, respiration, heart…
Nature: Love is a Two Way Street
Author, Professor, Botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer asked her students this question one day: You love nature but do you think that nature loves you back? Her students, all very respectful of the earth, had never thought about it that way. I bet most of us haven’t either!
Hikes: A Walk In A Wild Oregon Forest
This afternoon Chad and I found ourselves in a wild forest full of towering trees, a multitude of mushrooms, and glowing autumn leaves. And when I say we found ourselves there, I mean that we got back to some integral, essential part of who each of us are, and who we are as a couple. Not…
Travel: Cape Blanco Cabin Camping and a Farewell
Back in May, Chad and I traveled through Oregon and made a stop at Cape Blanco State Park, on the coast. We arrived at the park in early evening to a cool and cloudy 53 degrees. The campground is nestled into a forest populated mainly by giant, spooky looking Sitka Spruce trees. The forest is dense…
Harley hikes Sheep Creek Canyon
We spent a weekend in the Flaming Gorge area recently and took a drive to one of my favorite places in this part of the state, the Sheep Creek Canyon Geological Area, also known as Sheep Creek Canyon Loop. Chad took me here on one of my first visits to Utah and I was awed by the fascinating geology. So I was looking forward to returning – this time under a beautiful blue sky and bringing our dogs along with us…
Head in the clouds
All of us need reasons to relax. Life gets wound up and so do we. Sometimes the only reminder we need is something awe-inspiring from Nature to lower our heart rate a bit and take the edge off of the stress. Chad has an eye for noticing these moments, and also for capturing them –…
Hikes: Ouray Badlands
I’ve been intrigued with badlands since learning about them at work, enchanted by aerial views of land forms I couldn’t quite figure out but was eager to get a closer look at. I finally got a much closer look when we went to Ouray National Wildlife Refuge, a place known for its wetlands and migratory birds, to hike on the badlandy hills there.
Hikes: Yellow Flower Desert Pinnacle
When Chad and I need a quick hike, this is our new favorite location, the place we call Yellow Flower Desert. We discovered this area, just off of one of our major highways, several months ago and were enchanted at how quickly we were able to get to fun hiking terrain. When we went this…
Hikes: Yellow Flower Desert
It’s really amazing how spending some time outside can make you feel so good. Spending time outside in an amazing new location is even more invigorating, refreshing and revitalizing. We decided to take a late afternoon hike the other day and couldn’t quite find the right place. One place we tried was surrounded by massive…
Travel: Shiprock New Mexico
Last year on our trek across the country, we took a detour to go see Shiprock. This plan came about one day on our trip while Chad was studying the map. He said something like, “One possibility if we go through New Mexico would be to stop and see Shiprock.” I’m sure my eyes lit…
Skiing in the Desest
Now that winter seems to be over I can finally write about it. I’m not one of those people who loves winter (and that’s putting it nicely). Chad on the other hand, IS one of those people. And he loves to go out cross-country skiing, and yes, I admit, I have come to love it too…
Hikes: Coyote Canyon
I’m so lucky to have found and married somebody who shares my love of hiking in wild desert places. I’d been wanting to take Kristina to a little canyon in the area I call “the land between” and we went there for our most recent hike. It’s a place I remembered fondly even though it…
Hikes: Desert Wash in the Land Between
Why would you want to go out hiking in a place where there are no trails, no other hikers, and probably no signs of civilization at all? I never asked myself that question before meeting Chad, because going out hiking on trails was a rare enough treat and reprieve from my place in the noise…
Hikes: Autumn Outing in the Ashley National Forest
Getting out of the house and into nature, I notice a letting go of anything I’m preoccupied with. I feel like it is a sort of mental and spiritual deep cleaning, pushing out the superfluous, reconnecting to the essential. Doing a yoga pose or two during these moments of re-connection is invigorating, somehow more special…
Fantastical Fantasy Canyon
It started with Goblin Valley. The name caught my attention, of course, and when I looked it up to see what it was like, I was even more intrigued. Then Chad told me that there was a place not too far from here that was similar, with strange, fragile rock formations. Fantasy Canyon, the place…
Mountain Yoga
It was time for another adventure, and since our previous hike had been in a desert location, I suggested we go to the mountains this time. On a previous trip we’d driven around Elk Horn Loop and I’d told Kristina that I wanted to come back to one particular part of the loop – the…
Bear Hike At Pole Creek Canyon
For our latest weekly adventure, Chad took me up to a place called Pole Creek Canyon. We started our hike off-trail through some lovely Aspen forest, Chad pointing out bear claw marks on trees, and rocks overturned by bears looking for ants. Being pretty new to this type of hiking, that is, hiking in territory…
Hikes: Desert Hike in the Uintah Basin
For labor day we decided to go for a hike in one of Chad’s favorite desert canyons. He’d been telling me about this place, but I’d been slightly put off from getting excited about it because of a big stretch of power lines that were near the entrance. His enthusiasm for the location, however, convinced…
Hikes: Larva Lake
One of the ways Chad and I like to keep our relationship strong and let ourselves relax is by going on some type of adventure once a week. Chad took me up to another of his favorite spots in the Uintah Mountains. We hiked through the Ashley National Forest on our way to a small…
Travel: Cool Night in Mancos
Waking up in Chaco was hot, really hot, so it was a relief to finish out the day in the cool evergreen forest at Mancos State Park, Colorado. The next day before we hit the road we had a fun time doing some yoga, taking photos and relaxing. As ready as I was to get…
Travel: Drive through Southern Utah
As we made our tired way along the last leg of our 2016 cross-country odyssey (day 10!), I was thrilled to snap photos of the amazing scenery in Southeastern Utah. These landscapes always make me feel that I should be seeing big cats roam along them, as if they belong in Africa or southeast Asia….
Travel: Chaco National Heritage Park, New Mexico
The road to get there was 21 miles of washboard purgatory (why not hell? well, we didn’t know if we would ever arrive…), but the arrival was cool moonlight silhouettes of astounding buttes. Coyotes howled all night and the burning sun woke us in the morning. This was my first real experience of the desert.
Travel: Oasis State Park, New Mexico
I got some good driving time in on the RV going from southwest Oklahoma to northeast New Mexico. The roads were nice and straight, which made for smoother sailing in the RV (which over 55mph often felt like a boat rocking on a troubled sea), and I started to relax a bit driving such a behemoth….
Travel: Wichita Wildlife Refuge, Oklahoma
The Wichita Wildlife Refuge was one of the few destinations that were on our original travel plan that we actually made it to. It was exciting to be arriving just around sunset and to have a wide choice of campsites to pick from. Also, we were finally out of the humid forests of the Southeast…
Travel: Tishimingo Morning
Arriving at Tishomingo State Park in Mississippi late on the second day of our cross-country honeymoon trip was exciting because I was out of known territory. The camp sites were nestled in around a lake, and we drove around in the dark trying to pick the best one (ie, the one that was both close…
Travel: Late Arrival at Victoria Bryant State Park
Our first stop on our cross-country trip was Victoria Bryant State Park. This was not where we had planned to stay, but once we got on the road, we quickly realized we weren’t going to make the 10pm gate closing at Fort Mountain State Park in Georgia. (Note to fellow travelers, 10pm seems to be…
Hearthwilde 