While you are enjoying your adventures in the outdoors, you are bound to come across some animals. The kids may want to play with them, but you know they should stay a safe distance away. So, what’s a safe distance? Some of the National Parks recommend that you stay 25 feet away from all animals. […]

In the early 1980’s the U.S. Forest Service was seeing increased wilderness use and associated impacts on the ground. For the most part, people were not intentionally causing damage, they were just loving the land to death. The solution was clearly not more regulation, but better education. Efforts to teach people how to enjoy the […]

Pele’s Hair has been appearing in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park . . .

If you are part of an outdoor or health oriented group in your area, it would be an easy process to set up an outdoor health challenge and encourage more people get the outdoor time they need.

Researchers at the University of Essex Centre for Sports and Exercise Science coined the term “green exercise” to describe exercising in the presence of nature. Their research on the topic found that getting outdoors has great benefits over exercising indoors. In 2010 they reported that both intensity and duration of green exercise showed large benefits […]

  This quote comes from John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir edited by Linnie Marsh Wolfe, 1938.  The photo was shot by me, Jerry Haugen, along the Pacific Crest Trail in Crater Lake National Park and is © 2010 Global Creations LLC. To me this quotation reflects the clearness of mind […]

A signal mirror is an item the armed forces recommend for a survival kit. Signal mirrors are widely available and often priced in the $10 to $20 range. These mirrors . . .

Arrhythmia or irregular heartbeat is extremely common, generally harmless and tends to occur more often as we age. However, if these irregular heartbeats become severe or continue for long enough, they can deprive the body of oxygen leading to all kinds of complications – including death.

I’d like to propose another urban exploration opportunity – exploration of old logging railroads and logging camps. The evidence of these man-made structures is scattered around the forest lands of the American west.

John B. Waldo (1844-1907) was an Oregon politician and state supreme court justice with asthma.  It was the asthma that led him on horseback sojourns each year into the Oregon Cascade Mountains for relief. His love of the mountains led to his support of William Gladstone Steel’s efforts to make Crater Lake into a National […]