To hear my wife tell it, I present no shortage of difficulty when it comes to Christmas trees. She's probably right. Before our second Christmas I barnstormed with fury that we forget a tree and get a cactus instead, because that was something we could plant in the yard after making a spectacle of it. Well, that unfestive suggestion grew no wings and did not fly. We still found ourselves at a tree lot, looking for something perfectly triangular and uniform and just tall enough and something more or less out of a storybook and everything else that just doesn't come naturally to things that are, well, natural.
We bought one. Probably for 60 bucks. The whole experience left me dissatisfied . . .
What makes this short piece unique is its perspective: most of this is shot from a radio controlled helicopter, giving us not just an aerial view, but also a view on the move.
Enjoy.
* * * The Sunday Morning Chillax? Here's the idea. It's Sunday. Maybe you're up early and enjoying a cup of coffee in the quiet morning while your kids sleep in. No need to read, this is always a video; something to give you happy thoughts about mountains, fresh air, stoke, fun, or being outside. Enjoy. Relax. Not guaranteed to be weekly . . . hey, you get what you pay for.
Home is where the head is . . . oh, wait, that's not saying. But it could be the truth. If you're the sort of person, or if you know the sort of person, who can whittle hours away pouring over maps, these handmade Australian pillows might call out to you . . .
Somewhere along the road to progress, civilized automotive manufacturers decided the "gas light" was a good thing to add to the dashboard. In most cases when that little red orb illuminates, you're supposed to feel some gratitude but you don't, do you? It's really like getting your final warning. Under the best of situations running out of gas is a downright drag, so a little hey-bro-put-somthing-in-the-tank ought to be a nice reminder; instead it's more of a bummer, the jig is up.
Well. As far as running out of gas is concerned, this was not the best of situations . . .
The forest road I picked out while combing the map at the kitchen table a week ahead of time looked like it would take us to a camp spot right above the West Fork of Oak Creek at about 6,700 feet under the pines and junipers. It always amazes me what a map will reveal. This time it showed tight bends and little space between the contour lines. Translate that to an abrupt and likely sublime view of the canyon below, one carved out of polished and peaceful sandstone and trimmed with the dying leaves of oaks and cottonwoods. The otherwise nondescript spot is down a long dirt road that eventually leads to nowhere resembling civilization. Sometimes this is a pretty good thing.
However, as everyone knows, you can't always get what you want. Then again, what is an outdoor adventure without a series of bummers to solve?
Last school year, we hosted and became family with a 16-year old girl from Ukraine who wanted nothing more than to see Grand Canyon. I've written about her a few times already, but because this website increasingly gets more readers every day (and we're grateful for it), I feel like I need to preface this properly. Her name is Ania and she lived with us for almost a year (more). Today, Ania attends a university in Lithuania studying English and business. During her spring semester here, she took a guitar class and a photography class. Truthfully, she taught me a lot about photography. And I taught tried to teach her how to rock a C7 chord, but she resisted trimming her fingernails.
Photography class started with the history of image making, so it was weeks before she came home with a pinhole camera and a project to shoot. When the class moved on to 35mm cameras . . .
If it were every little boy's dream to grow up to live on a ranch in Wyoming, the world might be a different place. But I don't know that for sure.
*** What is "The Sunday Morning Chillax?" Here's the idea. You're up early. You're enjoying a cup of coffee in the quiet morning while your kids sleep in. No need to read, this is always a video; something to give you happy, relaxing thoughts about mountains, fresh air, stoke, fun, or whatevs. Enjoy. Relax. You deserve it. Uh . . . except this is not guaranteed to be weekly. If only free could also mean consistent.
When another "Top 10 Best" feature in a magazine lands in my paws, I'm probably just as put off and pulled in as anybody with a moment of disdain and wonder: did my beloved _____ make the list? The perfect formula to spark your curiosity strokes both love and hate. We hate to see our little home town or favorite Sunday breakfast restaurant overused and under appreciated by the public but a part of us also loves to see recognition for the places, people and things that shape our personal lives. Right?
A mother and son get around on two wheels at University of Arizona
Progress comes in many forms, and it seems like more people riding bicycles is a reasonable sign of it. Michael Mckisson of TucsonVelo.com, who let us share this photo, just posted a report that bike commuting for 2010 in Tucson, Arizona saw an impressive resurgence by 58 percent from 1.9 percent in 2009 to 3 percent in 2010. This also moved Tucson to the 6th position on the list of top U.S. bicycle commuting cities . . .
It's just not likely that I have the words available to me that would convince you to click play. So just click play.
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The Sunday Morning Chillax is just a weekly series, always a video, always on Sunday morning. Even though my wife's friends don't like it all that much, it's just here to give you happy thoughts about mountains, fresh air, good views, stoke and fun as you take in the week's most relaxing morning. Enjoy. Relax. Come back every week for more.
One million homes in the Philippines without electricity are going to get a sweet surprise by 2012, if all goes to plan by MyShelter Foundation. If you watch this short video, which is quite moving and inspiring, you'll see a beautifully clever use for used plastic soda bottles.
Students at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) designed and developed this solar bottle bulb. Turns out, it's also a small shining glimmer of hope for plastic trash as it becomes a channel of light for people who live a life with so little. While we should all be doing what we can to avoid products that come in single-use packaging, like bottled water and soda, however it's beautiful to see used plastic bottles being recycled in a fashion that makes a marked improvement on living conditions that the developed world would take for granted.
The internet being what it is, it's now more and more difficult to find a wilderness timelapse video that delights and charms as much Journey through Canyons by Victor Novikov. He didn't just shoot beautifully varied and diverse scenes, but each one is also just short enough that it leaves you wanting more. Bravo. And then there's the music . . .
The Wild & Scenic Film Festival could be coming to your town pretty soon. There's a good chance, too, that you and your family will love it. This is a touring version of the much larger festival that was held in California earlier this year that promised, and delivered, a beautiful selection of inspiring images and moving narratives promoting the protection of wild places. That's a cause we can all get behind.
Because I receive a good number of emails about our 12-volt fridge/freezer that we have in our truck, I posted earlier five things you should know about them to help answer the usual questions. I know and understand that an $800+ fridge inside the ol' family ride just isn't in the cards for most folks, so it came as quite a surprise when, as I was working on that article, an email slid into my inbox introducing me to this sustainably-minded cardboard cooler from Boutique Cascades.
You read that right. Cardboard. I heard that chuckle, you. Take a look at this thing anyway.
As of today, the Wallow Wildfire in eastern Arizona has burned over 200,000300,000400,000 500,000 acres and it's still going. The big cloud you see in this video is the smoke rising from the forest near Alpine, Arizona. It's amazing in the holy-shit-that-makes-my-stomach-drop sense. Right now, officials believe that the fire started from an abandoned campfire.
We're on the tail end of a tiling project at our house right now that's kept us locked in suburbia and indebted to Home Depot's foresight to build a store just a mile and some change from our front door. I've spent all hours of the clock on my knees lately. A good portion of spring has escaped, though I promised myself last summer that I'd abandon everything this April and May to spend weekends hiking and biking to locate and shoot my best blooming saguaro photo. Never happened. But not all is lost. I've mastered the caulk gun.
Of all the ways to experience Grand Canyon, from browsing with the tourist herds on the South Rim for a day to riding the Colorado River for 10 days, nothing could be as chilling as flying below the rim. Enjoy this ride . . .
No matter what we become, it's like we just can't get away from the simple fact that we must pay homage to our parents for turning us into the creatures we grow up to be. Liz Clark learned to sail at a young age, and at 9 years old her parents pulled her out of school for a 6-month, 5,000-mile sea-going voyage to Mexico. She says she learned two things about herself from that extraordinary trip: "I wanted to protect the world from human destruction and, one day, I wanted to sail around it."
Put your hands together for Brad Garland. His photo taken from Alstrom Point on Lake Powell brought in the most votes this week (click here to see the other entires). Brad worked hard for this photo. He ferried his son and two buds to a trailhead at Paria Canyon, then spent four days doing a solo exploration of the area until the threesome would finish their backpacking trip. A winter storm settled in with brutal winds of 60 mph, freezing temperatures, and a touch of snow. He hunkered down in the comfort of his King Kamper trailer, probably gave a thought to his son and his friends with something like, "poor fellas are gonna be miserable tonight, sucks to be them!", and woke up the next day to get this shot and many others.
I received a few emails this week about these photos, not just Brad's. Of all of them, this one really sends the message as to why Brad's photo won:
"I admit that I'm biased towards photo #1, though. Growing up, our family spent a lot of time camping at Lake Powell . . . I remember one particular trip where a rental boat pulled up about a 100 yards from our camp and the operators wrestled out several cameras, cases, and tripods to take photos of the butte. At the time, that was just the scenery we camped in, but now, looking back, it's like, 'Holy crap! That's the scenery we camped in!'" - Craig
Somehow, he managed to strike a chord with most hearts out there. Brad gets a $50 gift card to REI.
Today in outdoor history John Muir was born in 1838 in Scotland. His family emigrated to the United States when he was 11 years old and he lived in Wisconsin up until the middle of the American Civil War. Few know that Muir was draft dodger. He fled to Canada in 1864 to avoid getting called up for involuntary military service. During his dodge, Muir earned his way in the world through rough labor in the logging industry at a Canadian sawmill. Even fewer will see the irony in that - considering what he did later in life to help establish Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks and to found, oh, that little environmental (tree-saving?) organization known as The Sierra Club.
An accident at a sawmill rendered Muir nearly blind. Upon his recovery he decided simply to follow his dream of exploring wilderness and studying botany. Just a few months later he set out on his famous 1,000-mile walk from Indiana to Florida by way of, as he later wrote in a memoir, "the wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find."
Muir's travels and explorations kept him from any semblance of a "normal" life for years. He wrote, he built a cabin that allowed a creek to run through it, he wandered in the mountains alone for weeks at a time, and rarely contracted himself with gainful employment. This lifestyle sustained him; he loved it. He was 42 years old when he did marry, and I'll avoid using the term "settled down." Muir managed to devote himself both to his family and to his love of the outdoors, which is why I'm writing about him here - that beautiful balance we parents all want, I assume, to attain.
He's well-known for referring to mountains and wilderness as home. I think we'd like to raise children who feel the same way.
I tried to come up with a better way to say it, a way that wouldn't set your hopes too high lest you not agree with me. But this is a fact: this video is so stunning that for most of it you don't realize it's a timelapse. This timelapse does two things for me. One, it urges me to go to Yosemite again because it's been a while. Two, it speaks to the amount of work and love, or love of the work, that goes into shooting timelapses like this. Each scene does its own part to tell the story of a day of natural surprises in Yosemite Valley. Henry Jun Wah Lee deserves a vast slack-jawed audience and a pat on the back for this one.
