The other day, I came across a custom made hiking staff from www.custommade.com.  This particular staff incorporates a survival kit into it. Survival on a Pole The people at Custom Made took a normal trekking pole, added a wooden handle, wrapped the handle in 20 feet of paracord, attached a carabiner with another 7 feet of paracord, attached a […]

A lot of people died this summer in the National Parks of the U.S. I didn’t highlight these deaths in the weekly Outdoor News simply because I didn’t want to discourage anyone from exploring the outdoors in the National Parks or anywhere else. Nonetheless, this blog has a topic for “Survival”, so perhaps examining a […]

Mardie Townsend, Claire Henderson-Wilson, Elyse Warner and Lauren Weiss, School of Health and Social Development, Deakin University, recently prepared Healthy Parks Healthy People: the State of the Evidence 2015 for Parks Victoria (Australia).  The 103 page document reviews the post-2008 scientific literature in relation to the health benefits of parks and natural spaces.  The attempt is […]

We’ve mentioned several research efforts that have shown the benefits of being outdoors in nature and we’ve even noted that if nature was a drug, your doctor would prescribe it to you.  Well, Dream Tree Films and Productions with Justin Bogardus, Joseph Victorine, Jed Lazar and Cassandra Ellis have taken the idea a step farther.  They […]

    The profile of cairns rose recently when Arches National Park posting the following on their Facebook page: “Cairns may look like whimsical rock sculptures, but they are actually important way-finding tools built by rangers to facilitate navigation of park trails. Visitor-built cairns can lead people off-trail, damage biological soil crust, and cause visual clutter. […]

The Pennsylvania Land Trust Association (PLTA) says: “Unstructured, frequent childhood play in informal outdoor settings powerfully boosts the cognitive, creative, physical, social and emotional development of children. It also engenders deep conservation values; more so than any other factor.”  Continuing research is supporting this statement. In an effort to explain the idea further and to […]

Why does lightning strike trees? Lightning likes to strike trees because trees offer a nice conductor that gets the lightning into the ground with the minimum of resistance.  The key to this power of trees is the water they contain.  A heathy tree will have a lot of water just under the bark for the lightning […]

Every summer the forested lands of the western United States, and in other countries as well, burst into flames as humans make errors handling fire or lightning storms ignite trees from the sky.  Fed by dry wood and brush and stoked by winds these fires can burn thousands of acres in a few days.  As they […]

Science Supports Nature “In our studies, people with less access to nature show relatively poor attention or cognitive function, poor management of major life issues, poor impulse control,” says Frances Kuo, a professor of natural resources and environmental science and psychology at Illinois University.  She has examined the relationships between people and the natural environment from […]

As defined by psychologists, rumination is the compulsively focused attention on the symptoms of one’s distress, and on its possible causes and consequences, as opposed to its solutions.  Rumination is similar to worry except rumination focuses on bad feelings and experiences from the past, whereas worry is concerned with potential bad events in the future.  Both rumination and worry are […]