Colin Fletcher is known as the “Father of Backpacking” and Robert Wehman has just published the only biography of the reclusive man.
You can purchase the book from Amazon as a Kindle version for $9.99 or paperback for $18.53. I have never heard of the author but the reviews have generally been very good.
I did buy it for a friend, but will pass on reading it myself.
Continue reading Walking Man: The Secret Life of Colin Fletcher (a biography)
In January I wrote that home solar might be lipstick on a pig, and it makes more sense to make a home energy efficient before even considering solar. I also promised to post monthly updates on our utility bills.
Well, we now have 12 complete months of energy usage under our belts after making our energy upgrade improvements. We’ll take a look at:
Continue reading Energy Upgrade Stats: Month 12 (1 year of tracking)
It happened. My faithful dedicated backpacking watch, my Timex Expedition Resin Combo died. I wrote about this watch a few years ago in this backpacking watch dissertation that provided a lot of mostly useless information that for some reason does interest people seeing more than 2,000 people have bothered to read it.
This watch was a little over 6 years old. It lived a good life and is survived by a ‘70s military watch and an original ‘80s Swiss Army Watch. No services will be held and it will be interned at the Riverside County landfill on Edom Hill.
No autopsy was performed. It is an inexpensive timepiece and when a new battery failed to revive the heartbeat of its digital/analog innards, no one was interested in repairing or bringing it back to life – the victim of a throwaway item in a throwaway society.
The best day of the year is the day after Labor Day.
Labor Day weekend is the last hurrah of the summer. For many it is the last picnic, last camping trip, last backpack, or last hike of the year. It is often the 3-day weekend attached to a week or two of summer vacation. Unlike most, I look forward to The Day After Labor Day.
I hope the title of this post is catchy and might generate a bit of traffic to read it. My blog is mostly written for my kids and a handful of friends, as I have stated numerous times. I am under no illusion that I have any influence in the world of backpackers or adventurers and recognize the readership of this website is small. My hope is that I can inspire a handful of people to think about wilderness and our proper place in it, who in turn can encourage others to approach wilderness in an ethical manner. Perhaps we can create a renewed focus on Wilderness Ethics.