Nature & Wildlife
People and Wildlife Need Each Other for Good Health
Here, looking out from the Anthropocene, we tend to regard nature as something other than ourselves.
Good Nature Travel Blog
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Conservation
Conservation or Preservation: Which Is Best for Now and in the Future?
In the environmental world, it’s sometimes characterized as the classic debate: should wild areas be preserved for their intrinsic qualities, or should they be conserved for their resources?
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Videos
Video: A Rocky Mountain National Park High
“Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature’s darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
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U.S. National Parks
Video: Hike Yosemite’s Half Dome, in High Definition
I’m not a big fan of experiencing high places, as most of you who follow this column know! But I do love being in the outdoors in natural places, especially in our national parks, so I appreciate the ability to carry out such a feat vicariously—and virtually.
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Conservation
We’re Losing Wilderness. And It’s A Loss to Science.
Today, it’s not only animal and plant species that we’re losing at an alarming rate. We’re losing wilderness; everywhere, all over the world.
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Nature & Wildlife
How Do You Define “Nature”? Probably with a Story.
Ask any avid nature traveler how he or she first began to make a lifelong attachment to the outdoors, the natural world or a particular species of wildlife, and you’ll get as many anecdotes as the individuals you query.
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U.S. National Parks
Video: Bighorn Sheep Return to Their Yosemite Homeland
John Muir revered them. Western settlers nearly wiped them out. The final chapter in the story of North America’s rarest sheep is yet to be written. Watch!
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Travel Tales
Learning from Libby Lightning in Yosemite National Park
You can’t help but have a big adventure in the amazing Yosemite National Park. But doing small things here sometimes makes for the most lasting impressions.
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Videos
Video: Finding the Words to Define “Wilderness”
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines wilderness as “a wild and natural area in which few people live.” It’s a simple explanation that succeeds in giving you an idea of the word’s meaning. But the term wilderness has come to encompass a much broader concept.
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Videos
Video: the Interrelated and Networked Earth
Environmental philosopher and early national park advocate John Muir wrote in his 1911 book, My First Summer in the Sierra, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” It may be the truest thing anyone ever said about nature.
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Nature & Wildlife
50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act: the Meaning of Wilderness by 10 American Authors
Tomorrow, September 3, 2014, will mark the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. In 1964, the bill that created the act passed the Senate by a vote of 73–12 and the House by 373–1.
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Videos
Places of Peace: Video of Veterans in the Wilderness
From the moment I read John Muir’s sentiment about going to the mountains—that “thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, overcivilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity…”―I have tried to do just that at least once a year.