Welcome to my blog, the outdoor diary of someone who prefers to feel the earth beneath his feet. It’s what I am passionate about, it’s what I live for: to feel the earth beneath my feet. Not pavement, not concrete and especially not carpet, but the wild earth in its many natural forms.
I have written two books about this passion: The Earth Beneath My Feet (published June 1, 2021) and On Sacred Ground (published October 1, 2022). The books take readers on a 7,000-mile wilderness walk into the heart of wild nature, and the purpose of this blog is to add extra background to the books. But it is also to share and celebrate the wild, and perhaps even to inspire. From engaging deeply with nature I’ve received extraordinary rewards, and if this blog can lead even one other person towards those rewards then it will have served its purpose.
Many of my wilderness journeys take place alone, but through this blog I hope you’ll tag along and share the miles with me. Thanks for stopping by!
And for further details on the book, select the BOOKS page in the menu above.
I’M THRILLED TO announce that High Summer: Backpacking the Canadian Rockies, by backpacker and author Chris Townsend, will be available for purchase on Amazon from November 1st 2024. This new and updated second edition of High Summer is being released through my independent publishing imprint, the Enchanted Rock Press. For those who missed my blogs
AUTUMN COMES EARLY to Colorado’s high country. It doesn’t wait until October to get going the way it does back where I grew up in London, but instead begins altering the landscape even before August is done. The thrill and wonder of it catches me out pretty much every year. When I set out uphill
SLOW AND IMMERSIVE travel in nature can bring HUGE rewards. I’ve been fortunate to have experienced a few of them myself, and I’ve tried to convey them in my writing as best I can. Moving gently, senses open and engaged, stopping often to lose oneself in the details of the land, strolling along, or sauntering
LAST YEAR I had a plan: to get to know one place. To spend twelve months travelling in only one spot. Why? Well, the reasons were many. Some were understood. Some were deeper and less understood. Some were probably hidden even from me. And some were shallow. One reason was to write a book about
SPRING COULD WELL be my favourite season in the High Country. The fading away of feet of snow, the re-emergence of the living earth after being buried for so long, the first flush of green, the first flowers, the return of blissful warmth on bare arms and legs that had previously been encased in layers
ON THE SECOND day of June, 1993, I fell down a mountain. It nearly killed me. On the twentieth day of August, 1994, I went back. Happily, this second visit went better. There were no finger nails lost, you’ll be glad to know. No cartwheeling down glaciers. But there were tears, and not only from