Perfectly placed in the center of a green field filled with scattered sage bushes, stands an octagonal, traditional Navajo hogan. The remnants of a night’s fire slowly puff smoke from the chimney, filling the surrounding air with the scent of campfire dust. Prairie dogs call out to each other in cute chattering barks as they

According to Barry Lopez, “querencia” is a term that “refers to a place on the ground where one feels secure, a place from which one’s strength of character is drawn”. La querencia is where one is familiar and comfortable with the sights, sounds and beings around them. For me, this place is rural Vermont. My

The trail has taught me many lessons; but the one I keep relearning is the art of slowing down. My foot slips below the surface, only to be enveloped completely by the thick, slow moving quicksand. I take a deep breath and begin to extract myself. The weight of my backpack, along with my body

The sun grazes the tops of the canyon walls as the songbirds sing and the clouds disappear. The air is cool and the breeze light. It is morning within the canyon. Today is our third layover day along the Dirty Devil, a winding silt-filled river flowing from up past Hanksville, UT, southeast down to the

“Our place is part of what we are. Yet even a “place” has a kind of fluidity; it passes through space and time… A place will have been grasslands, then conifers, then beech and elm. It will have been half riverbed, it will have been scratched and plowed by ice. And then it will be

We met with Jerry Shue, a Moab-based landscape geographer before embarking on our first twelve-day trip into Horseshoe Canyon to get our first introduction to the natural and social processes that have shaped the Colorado Plateau. He projected an image of a mesa composed of Navajo Sandstone on a small screen in a dark auditorium

My favorite poet, Naomi Shihab Nye, says that our lives are poems. Every memory, each conversation, and all the places you exist within are contributions to the narrative that encapsulates our human experience. If she is right, which I believe she is, these past two months have been some of the most poignant verses in

When I signed up for the Montana Afoot and Afloat course last winter, I wasn’t sure exactly what I was getting myself into, but two months of backpacking and kayaking through Montana while getting a semester’s worth of credits sounded exciting enough for me to apply. I figured I would get to see a lot

Adventure Cycling Association is accepting applications now through December 31, 2018, for the sixth annual Greg Siple Award for Young Adult Bicycle Travel. Four young adults will be selected to take an Adventure Cycling educational course, win bike travel gear, and more in exchange for doing an outreach project that promotes bicycle travel. “Throughout my

The wind swept in as we opened the van door to rolling hills of Montana farm land. Round bales speckled the landscape, still fresh and intact just after summertime hay season. The sun felt amazing on our faces after so many days of sleet, snow, and snizzel. Across the ridge we could see the beautiful