Listening In: Earthly Sounds in a Man-Made World

I always find it ironic when I see a jogger or hiker in the woods wearing earbuds. It seems that while this person is taking the time to travel through the natural world, they are at the same time filtering part of it out. It is the equivalent of visiting a museum wearing a blindfold. Maybe this is odd behavior, but maybe it isn’t. We humans have had a lot of help tuning out mother nature, especially with the advent of

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Estimating Distance with your Thumb

Estimating distance is important in daily life, hiking, and survival situations. It helps you to maintain your sense of direction, calculate distance and height, and estimate travel time while hiking relative to your pace.

Estimating distance by using only your finger is based on this known fact about human anatomy: Your arm is about ten times longer than the distance between your eyes.

The distance

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Cooking to save fuel

Fuels, such as white gas, kerosene, and denatured alcohols are regularly used for cooking with backpacking stoves. The thought of running out of fuel mid-hike with a pack full of hot freeze-dried entrées is a common concern. Fuel savings greatly depend on the efficiency of the cooking process, as well as the stove and type of cooking pot. One of the best ways to conserve fuel is to avoid energy loss during cooking. Here are a few strategies to conserve

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How to Cook when Backpacking
Whether you have recently started backpacking or are a veteran, you could probably benefit from a few cooking tips.

First, we’ll describe the common method that backpackers use when cooking dried foods and strategies you can use to conserve your cooking fuel when using a backpacking stove. This method of cooking is a great concept and works well both on and off the trail. We

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Treat Chapped Lips Naturally

Anyone spending time hiking, cycling or skiing, has experienced chapped lips. The condition of dry, chapped lips often starts as a minor annoyance, but can lead to painful and unsightly cracking and bleeding, as well as a more severe condition called angular cheilitis (also called perleche), a fungus that causes painful splitting at the corners of the mouth.

Chapped

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Saving your knees while hiking downhill

Knee problems are common because they are one of the most used and abused joints in the human body. If you frequently experience knee pain during descents or resulting soreness afterwards, chances are you need to improve your form or pack weight.

Excess weight adds more strain to the knees

Your knees and hips are vulnerable to injury because they bear the most weight of your body. A force of

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Interesting Facts about Turkeys

Wild Turkeys in Western NC - take by Ken Thomas of KenThomas.us

We seldom see wild turkeys while backpacking, although we were surprised to see a flock alongside the road while heading back from a trailhead in Linville Gorge, NC. I could not count how many birds were in that flock because they consecutively dashed away in the thick of the tree cover. I am pretty sure there were at

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Holiday Gift Guide for Backpackers

Need to update your backpacking gear or looking for gift ideas? We’ve put together a selection of our most favored backpacking gear that we own.

If you enjoy the outdoors, chances are you are involved in multiple hobbies to take you out-of-doors, such as hiking, biking, paddling, rock climbing, etc. Purchasing high quality gear and clothing may cost more upfront, but you’ll need to purchase less often. Also, most outdoor gear is interchangeable across multiple hobbies (well, maybe not rock climbing), so your

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Leaf Foliage Lesson

“Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.” ~Stanley Horowitz

Fall in the Appalachian Mountains (Western North Carolina)

Autumn is a spectacular time of color in many areas, and the Appalachians are no exception.  From radiant reds to mustard yellow, the vibrant display of color is short-lived, earning leaf-peeping peak priority.

What causes

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Coconut: your backpacking food companion
flickr.com/photos/mckaysavage/

Coconuts are harvested from the coconut palm tree, which flourish in tropical climates such as the Philippines, Thailand, Mexico, and India. They also grow on the U.S. mainland in South Florida. Coconuts have made it to the shore of nearly every continent, unassisted by human effort. They can travel up to 3 months in the ocean, wash up on sandy island shorelines, and sprout into a tree that will bear

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