Category: Cultural critique
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Hunting the future
Exploring the underbelly of any subculture via internet forums is invariably equal parts fascinating and revolting. Diving into the graininess of people at their most unfiltered teaches a lot, about a particular subject and about humanity generally. If you dive not far into American hunting culture, you’ll become acquainted with the narrative of how liberal…
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Clouds of our own
I can find no direct evidence that Theodore Roosevelt ever said that comparison is the thief of joy, but there is in the modern idiom a truthiness to it. If he did say, or more likely write (he penned around 50 books and over 150,000 letters) that, I like to think he was speaking both…
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Too, much
If you haven’t read Mark Sundeen’s Car Camping, you should. The book, from 2000, appears to be out of print but readily available, and is worthwhile as both a fable of young adult purposeless and as a snapshot of Moab before the latest flood. Sundeen reappeared recently, with an article in Outside about the Mighty…
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Great small game hunts of North America (2019 Hunting in review)
In 2019 I spent fewer days far afield, in the wilderness and on big destination hunts, than any year since I started hunting. Nights in a tent backpacking while hunting were in single digits, which is a drastic reduction. When I’ve written these year in hunting posts in the past my predominant recent conclusion has…
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A decade in the outdoors
7 things that happened in the past decade; equipment, trends, and the ways the two intersect to create human experience. The Alpacka booty The technological advancement of the decade is, for outdoor adventure, without question the packraft. 10 years ago the state of the art was the above. Today, boat shapes make that level of…
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Forward the consumer
I have profoundly mixed memories of my first Outdoor Retailer. The barely 1 year old Little Bear had an ear infection come on while we were hiking in Glacier just before, was cranky on the drive down to SLC through the night, and the next night required a hasty visit to first urgent care and…
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Shit that works week: the return
The original series has remained amongst my most-read posts throughout the nearly five years since it was published. This is because, in the end, backcountry gear is not as complicated as we are inclined to think, and because the online world (concerning outdoor adventure and generally) has become ever more fake. Let us discuss. The…
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Small, too small
The last year of college Andy and I lived in a four room apartment carved out of the second story of an old house a few blocks from campus. The staircase to our carpeted kitchen was steep and creaked, tacked on to the back, an afterthought for money. I first took the second, and slightly…
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Angles
In the last few days, winter has finally caught up with us. The forecast for the past 24 hours was impressive, 45 and sunny falling to a few degrees (F) below 0, with close to a foot of snow, maybe some rain, and winds up above 20 miles an hour. At my 5000′ camp only…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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