Call of the Frontier

The river that lay out on the western horizon was still an unknown to me – a long, mysterious meandering flow. The slow, deep, turbid waters of this flow seemed meant to irrigate croplands here in Crawford County, not to accommodate extraordinarily large spawning trout. But I was here to expand my horizons, to do radical new things and probe mysterious waters, here to challenge another frontier.

Just the Basics: Winter Warmth

My opinions on all this stuff have changed and matured over the last thirty years or so and I now know what works for me and I don’t worry about the cold too much anymore. This isn’t to say the danger posed by hypothermia and frostbite aren’t real though.

Of Flowages and Fire

The ground was soggy as we sloshed back in on this early January day. We parked at a place that I’ll never reveal to walk in to a stream I’ll never name.

Weeding

We strive to achieve perfection, every shrub and flower in its assigned place, looking its best, and nothing else crowding things and making a mess, nothing interfering with appearances or first impressions.

State of Mind

“It’s just much, much too cold. The valley never warmed this morning and the trout are really, really put off. They’re just not eating anything,” Nigel consoled and rationalized for us both.

Walking

Walking can be thought of as the basis of almost all your further activities in the wild.

Back Out West

So, on October fifteenth, my packed-to-capacity Kia Soul merged onto the Pennsylvania turnpike, headed west. Susan was in the passenger seat and Washington State lay somewhere out on the horizon.

Welcome to the Forest

So, I’m turning over a new leaf today, at least for a while, and writing a series on the basics – how to get started outdoors from square one, from venturing out your back door to pursuing fish to survival.

Crippling Complexity

On October 22, 1853 Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal, “As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth.” It sounds nice but isn’t this merely the rumination of a 19th Century […]

Montana

Cross-posted from the blog at MarchOfLiberty.com, with apologies for the delay. July 27, 2021 The creature who stood there in the rain waiting for me was certainly a woman, but a woman who’d known abuse and neglect and sorrow and disappointment, all in doses higher than most of us will ever know. She stood at […]

the dying fish

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