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 and On Sacred Ground. The books take readers on an epic 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!
The Earth Beneath My Feet is almost here. Indie-publisher, the Enchanted Rock Press, will be launching it on June 1st in print and ebook formats. The book will be available on Amazon very shortly – watch this space!
And for further details on the book, select the BOOKS page in the menu above.
IT WAS A fairly typical spring week along Colorado’s Front Range: snow one day, warmth the next; clear one moment, cloudy the next. As winter ebbed into spring and then slipped back into winter each day brought something new. For a wanderer on foot, it was just about perfect. Despite a busy week I
I’M A LITTLE LATE with this blog… but that’s okay: the snowstorm it covers was a little late too. Storm ‘Xylia’ (and who else dislikes the naming of regular weather systems as though they are hurricanes?) trundled through seven days ago, dropping almost two feet of snow on Golden – but for a while it
TWO WEEKEND’S AGO I camped in Colorado’s Mount Evans Wilderness. To say the February night was cold would be an understatement. Sure, it wasn’t Himalayan or polar cold, but the minus five Fahrenheit (minus twenty Celsius) I recorded INSIDE my tent wasn’t tropical either! For me, it teetered right on the edge of ‘uncomfortable’, a
I WAS ON assignment this week… well, on speculative assignment. A photographer friend kindly suggested my name to a prominent Colorado magazine. They were looking for photos to illustrate a ‘how to’ feature on winter camping and wondered if I had any. Sure I did – plenty. Far too many perhaps. Snow camping shots from
ON THE WAY back from my recent quinzhee stay I meandered by Brainard Lake. In summer the location can be horrendously busy and the atmosphere far from wild, but on Sunday February 14, with the temperature at minus twelve Fahrenheit (minus twenty-four Celsius), and snow burying the land, and no one else about, it wasn’t
THE FORECAST was irresistible. It called for snow, arrival of an Arctic airmass, and with it the coldest temperatures of winter so far. Overnight lows were forecast to plummet to -13 Fahrenheit, -25 Celsius, which was impressively frigid, or even life-threatening, under certain circumstances. But as I saw it, perfect conditions for my fifth night