Get Out

She’s wearing yoga pants and a ponytail, clutching borrowed climbing shoes and a safety harness. She warily looks up Karen Rock at Moonstone Beach. Her palms are sweaty. As she watches a couple of shaggy-haired guys ascend the cliff, her stomach tightens. She’s so nervous. What she doesn’t realize is that she’s built for this. […]

  From the time I was 5 years old, cold autumn days meant heading up to the hills with my father, his friends and their children. We cut firewood, sat around a campfire, talked — and hunted. When I was 12, I killed my first deer. The experience was both exhilarating and depressing. Over the […]

I don’t fish or hunt. I’m not even much of a gardener. But somewhere in my DNA is a link to my hunter-gatherer past. Every August when the blackberries ripen, I succumb to the urge to harvest. Every autumn, I glean our apple tree to convert into crisps and sauce. Then, there is mushrooming. I […]

They’re everywhere. Decked out with enough gear to traverse the state. Pedaling in skirts to Farmers’ Market. Powering past you in the forest. That guy you’re passing on the highway, the one covered in so much bicycle gear you almost fail to notice his bulging calf muscles. (But you do!) That woman bouncing down the trail […]

There are bike people and there are car people. This being America, there are far more of the latter, which is sorta pathetic given the meager requirements for bike personhood. It’s generally a matter of self-identification, not unlike religious affiliation: Daily, weekly, even monthly observance of the rituals aren’t required so long as you believe […]

Caveat lector: Though I’m familiar with the handy mnemonic. “Sedges have edges; rushes are round; grasses are hollow right up from the ground,” I’m no botanist and I’m evaluating these plants from the point of view of a gardener. It has taken me years to clear the stodgy, banal nursery plants out of our yard. […]