Where I Would Rather Be

Solo wilderness backpacking is one of the purest forms of adventure. With everything you need on your back and miles of mountainous terrain ahead, life simplifies to the essentials: earth, sky, effort and breath. Far from roads and noise, the experience becomes...

Happy New Year! Celebrating the new year is, of course, all about reminiscing about the past year. And, for technology, this past year was a nuclear blast with the coming of age of artificial intelligence.  I have always thought that history would tell that the...

Interestingly enough, my version of AI comes up with a pretty good definition of what it can’t do: Empathy is the ability to understand, share, and feel another person's experiences, emotions, and perspectives as if they were your own, often described as "putting...

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines "responsibility" as moral, legal, or mental accountability. Being responsible means taking ownership of your choices and actions. Being responsible has forever been an admired and even expected trait of members of society. I...

Frosty’s May feature, “The Celestial Magic of a Campfire and Friends,” and several conversations reminiscing about backcountry hiking, got me to thinking of a column I wrote in July of 2017: It’s raining again today and I love it because it reminds me of the many...

Okay, at the risk of being accused of preaching to the choir, here goes... Four seasons: For some people, this is the biggest reason why we moved here and are going to stay forever. I’m from Southern California, which has only one season, except for the week in...