“It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still […]
Read more "More on the Map to Trails Untried, Untrod"I’ve just finished the day thinking about randomness. I’ve often thought and sometimes said that we deceive ourselves when we plan the minutiae of our lives, as though we’re really in control, and thus set ourselves up for disappointment and frustration. So I began an atypical paragraph, a rare stream of consciousness late in my […]
Read more "Life Randomized"I’ve written 50 spur-of-the moment little essays over the last year on topics as diverse as running, nature appreciation and ice-fishing, if I can really count all these blog posts as “essays”. Nature has been a recurring theme; appreciation for it, overcoming its challenges and then its implications for the human world. Now it’s time […]
Read more "Into the Winter"In 2009, I hiked across Pennsylvania as a part of the Eastern Brook Trout Solo Adventure, a tale that became “The Dying Fish,” my book on the resurgent eastern forest and all the fish who swim there. My findings in Pennsylvania, as with almost everywhere else, were findings of organic renewal on a grand scale; […]
Read more "The Breadth of the Wild Woods"I released a book this spring about a long walk north, about native trout and about personal growth. Maybe it was between the lines, but I also took a stab at answering why it is we humans need to seek out wilder places from time to time. There’s a good case to be made from […]
Read more "Why We Go Wild"I’ve been busy living the dream over the last month, I guess. This is the glamorous life of a successful author – traveling for book events, writing further pieces and building toward more big things and grander schemes. But, of course, mine are successes of scale and life remains anything but glamorous overall (I’d worry […]
Read more "September’s Been Good"Just a few quick thoughts on the hottest season today. And I think my most instinctive, spontaneous thought is: I’m ready for it to be over. I’m not a hot weather person and this summer has tested my endurance. I’m ready to see the greens of the maples begin to grade into orange and hear […]
Read more "Endless Summer"Are forests in decline? Is the forest of the northeast in decline? These are two broad questions I’ve spent a lot of time building a response to over the last several years. It’s not my primary pre- occupation but I give some attention to it because of its relevance to my studies and writing involving […]
Read more "The Wild Northeast: a Rebuttal to Eco-planners"Those of you who’ve followed me for a while have run into the term “libertarian environmentalism” once or twice. It’s a school of thought you may not have encountered anywhere before, maybe because I invented it. Well, I’d like to think I invented it but I’ve been learning about others championing this same cause since […]
Read more "Renewal for Liberty and the Environment"Over the course of five years I walked over 4,000 miles through the woods, studied dozens of trout streams and largely found my own path. I answered to no government official for what I was doing or why (well, almost never). America is one of the only places where this could have happened. Thirty eight […]
Read more "The Art of America"
the dying fish 