In the Arctic, Gwich’in youth are learning that protecting land means preserving a way of life. On Alaska’s North Slope, where polar bears den and gray wolves howl, protecting the land isn’t about supporting a cause or posting on social media from a protest at city hall. Here, it’s a… Read More
Lately, Jasper Pääkkönen has been struggling to maintain his fish-life balance: high-profile acting projects keep interfering with days spent on the water. Pääkkönen had been working, and winning awards, as an actor in Finland long before recent roles on the television series Vikings and in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman brought him international… Read More
Eric “EB Extreme” Brown scurries up the root wad, surveying the devastation that once was Cougar Ridge Trail. Located on the east side of Lake Whatcom, east of Bellingham, Washington, “Cougar” was once an unsanctioned downhiller trail scheduled for closure. Now it’s one of the area’s premier—and legal—rides. This section,… Read More
As seen in the November 2019 Journal. For the recipe behind Carston’s Spicy Magic Sauce, scroll to the end of the story. Although my tongue felt as if it might melt, Carston Oliver assured me I was not, in fact, going to die. “That’s just the capsaicin,”… Read More
It’s fascinating to hear Zaria Forman talk about ice, especially the way that it sounds. She describes the way it rumbles and thunders and cracks, even when you can’t see anything. It crackles and pops like breakfast cereal on high volume. “Ice crispies,” she calls it. “It’s a really beautiful… Read More
A group of four skiers moves methodically across the snow-covered Wapta Icefield ahead of me in single file connected by a thread-like rope—mothers on each end, Cheryl and Nan, and their two daughters, Roan and Sailor, in the middle. As Roan’s father and Cheryl’s husband, I’m tagging along on this… Read More
This summer, we–Clare Gallagher, Tommy Caldwell and Luke Nelson–explored, sweated, laughed and even cried in one of America’s greatest national treasures, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We learned from the Gwich’in Nation about how the coastal plains in northeastern Alaska are… Read More
I wake early to the dazzling heat of the African sun. Perched 400 meters high on a huge granite face in central Madagascar, all I can see is black and blue, the color of the Malagasy granite meeting the sky and, coincidentally, the same color as large areas of my… Read More
Snow and icy rime break from the porous black volcanic ridgeline crackling beneath my feet. Gale-force updrafts from the gullied ridges below whip the skis and splitboards strapped to our backs. Each gust forces us to step toward the cornice that hangs above the caldera to our right. The temperature… Read More
What if we could wear our garbage? That’s the idea behind ReCrafted, our line of clothing made from the scraps of used garments collected at our Worn Wear facility in Reno. It’s premium, Patagonia, upcycled. A second life for products that might not otherwise get one. ReCrafted was created by… Read More
Del Ficke is a soil junkie. “It’s like a drug the first time you feel real good soil,” he says. “You get it in your hands and can feel how good it is. You can smell it and taste it. You just want to take a big old hit of… Read More
