I can feel the colors out there changing. Each day is different. It’s impossible to catch more than we miss, but it’s fun to try!

Most of us cannot live an entirely outdoor life, even if we like to dream about it. If our passion is strong, perhaps we venture outdoors for months at a time, but in my case at least, this is preceded by many more months of indoor preparation. There is a dynamic interplay between our indoor [...]

Until I learned what I truly value, my life was essentially dedicated to the values of others. It was in the outdoors that I discovered the values I feel certain are my own.
We talk about our values all the time, treating them as a given. That’s appropriate, because most of the time I think they [...]

If I had to choose someone to take care of the lands I love to explore, I’d choose someone like Mike Dechter. He does a number of jobs for the Santa Fe National Forest, but found time to respond to an inquiry I made and give me an interview. Mike expresses how the outdoors inspires [...]

It’s easy to visit the outdoors, see all the grand sights that await you there, and not realize that the places we visit are changing. Mountains especially seem stoic, immovable, and almost changeless. We take our pictures and make our memories in an instant, and take home an impression of a place during only that [...]

It’s easy to underestimate Tom Hickey if you don’t get into a conversation with him. A retired tax accountant who lives in Santa Fe, I met him atop Desolation Peak above the Santa Fe Ski Basin on an afternoon hike. His stiff-kneed walk gave me the impression of an overambitious senior citizen. He was also [...]

I was climbing at the popular Las Conchas trailhead in Santa Fe National Forest when my curiosity was piqued by two 45-foot beams on a truck near the highway. When I saw what they were for, I had to document the way these huge beams were being moved into the backcountry:

The bridge builders were from [...]

Outdoorists value the outdoors highly, so we naturally pursue an outdoor life. What are the options? As I meet and talk to outdoorists, I want to map those options out for others. To take a first step in that direction, I created a new Lifemaps page to contain my maps, and sketched out the first [...]

My first dog taught me something that I hope to apply now to my outdoor life. I’d like to treat the outdoors as a whole the way I learned to treat my first dog.
I dropped out of college after my first semester, hoping to snowboard more. It was really my first attempt at an outdoor [...]

Today is my last day of work as a web developer at Colorado State University. For three and a half years I’ve been a Weekend Warrior, spending as many of those precious S-days under the sky as possible. Now I will attempt a new life as an Outdoorist. I have only an idea of what [...]