Without a doubt elevation gain can do some pretty nasty things to your body. Most outdoor adventures have heard of AMS – Acute Mountain Sickness. It can cause severe headaches, nausea, and vomiting. Fluids accumulating in tissue, known as edema, can make a bad situation worse, much worse. If fluid … Continue reading
The word backpacking means carrying all your belongings on your back. The word by itself, however, does not really tell the entire story. For example backpacking in the backcountry is very different than backpacking in the frontcountry. It could mean the difference between: hiking 20 miles and sleeping on the ground … Continue reading
Readily available technology, known as photo stitching, is allowing casual photographers to easily create amazing images. The technical terms used vary by vendor, but to the lay person they end up sounding pretty much like: Really cool 3D virtual reality things you can spin around in and look at everything … Continue reading
It seems during the biblical “wilderness of the wandering” six items could be found in the Sinaitic Tabernacle: an ark – a gold overlaid chest of acacia wood a table of shewbread – a gold overlaid bread board a lampstand – a seven branched light stand an alter of incense … Continue reading
A clear night sky in the wilderness offers spectacular views of celestial objects, including the International Space Station (ISS). After all, the dang thing weighs 954,334.8 pounds and covers an area of 26,909.78 square feet. I mean you’d have to be practically blind not to see it. According to the … Continue reading
New employees of any company or organization are faced with digging their way through various policy and procedure handbooks. Typical tomes requiring shoveling include volumes on workplace health and safety, anti-discrimination policy, sexual harassment, and most recently the dos and don’ts of bullying. These manuals are typically painful to read … Continue reading
Those of us of a certain age remember Euell Gibbons, a man of seemingly normal human intelligence, declaring on network television: “Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.” What an idiot! Not Euell, me. Years I wandered through thick pine forest, lugging my rolled oats and dirt flavored … Continue reading
Backpacking with small children is mental, and I mean that in every possible sense. To do so requires Olympic class mental gymnastics and probably some mandatory drug testing. Consider for a moment oil and vinegar. At first they don’t seem to go well together, but if you shake them really really hard … Continue reading
![By Vinish K Saini from Chandigarh, India (Moon n Venus played hide-and-seek) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://howtowilderness.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/800px-Voobie_-_Moon_n_Venus_played_hide-and-seek_by-sa-150x150.jpg "800px-Voobie_-_Moon_n_Venus_played_hide-and-seek_(by-sa)")
Star Struck You don’t just want to be a star gazer. Anyone capable of tilting their head back at night can be that. You want to be a Rock Star Gazer. A Rock Star Gazer is a gazer who says: That red star is Betelgeuse. It represents the arm pit … Continue reading
In preparation to take a Wilderness First Responder certification course I started thinking about Samaritans, not that I know any personally. When I looked them up in Wikipedia I was surprised to learn that as of Nov 2011 there were only 745 of them in the world, mostly near the … Continue reading
Analogies can be dangerous, especially mine. I love the simplicity and clarity they purportedly provide, but must confess when pressed they usually degrade into pretentious gibberish. Again, especially mine. At the risk of gibber-dome, I offer this example: Fishing is a religion, and there are atheists, agnostics, and believers. Fish … Continue reading
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