I can never get enough stories about Mount Washington, the little mountain in New Hampshire that kills just everybody, and which I'll never visit unless it's to get dragged into the weather station and gleefully drink cocoa as the sky goes all to white hell around me. Here are some highlights for you armchair outdoorswomen, rated on a scale of 1 to 5 !!!!!s.
When we were sailing I felt borne up by wings capable of taking me much farther than I’d ever thought possible, to places where I could watch the storm petrels glide before the rising and falling walls of waves. Where a calm night’s watch was spent watching the swirling bioluminescence in our wake while trying to think of the ways and whys I could and should steer my professional life away from the noise and…
Whenever I go to trade shows or industry events, I’m shocked at how solidly, stubbornly pink the women’s outdoor gear options are, even gear for truly extreme sports. Women’s gear often lacks features that are available for men—and for some sports, equipment isn’t available in women’s sizes at all.
You listen to the quiet hum of your best friends’ breathing, the ocean baptizing the shore again and again. This moment is the closest thing to home you’ve felt in a long time.
We're walking through a wash in the desert in the dark, and we're thirsty. We've been hiking since five a.m., and left our last water source a few hours after that. In the interim we climbed ten thousand feet cross-country up and over a ridge, stopping on top to look back down at our starting point in Death Valley, then hiked down the other side. The last of the light has long since gone. I'm…
Dear Mother, and to a lesser extent Father, Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility -- unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it -- that goes by the name of Camp Kenwood at Winnipesaukee. To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful and swarming with…
I went on a date tonight with this cute anthropologist. He has blue eyes, a beard, and his online dating profile says he’s good with knots, but not in a creepy, kidnap-y way, more in a handy, Boy Scout-y way. I was trying really hard not to rant about feminism and misogyny during our date, because he seemed nice and listening to me rant isn’t that much fun. Besides, I was pretty sure
There are a great many survivalist channels on YouTube, full of square-jawed and serious men and women, who know that life is stern and life is earnest and that the time for ripping apart our expensive watches and using the glass faces to start controlled fires in the high desert is now. But there is only one NorthSurvival. NorthSurvival is a male enchantress. He is without guile. Out of his mouth comes only the…
"Knowing how the falls had received their picturesque name, however, did nothing to help the two soggy lovebirds from becoming one with this natural phenomenon." "He was a 'popular' student at the University of California. With social success often comes confidence, perhaps even over-confidence. Whether any connection exists between this and his next decision remains conjecture." "The girls looked around and decided that this photo was too tame." "Amazingly, it looked like the two were…
Into Central Air: A Journey to the Limits of Climate Control Do You Really Need a High-Performance Couch? Fourteen High-Altitude Ultramarathons You'll Consider Watching On EPSN7 In 2007, Chad Kenniwit reached behind him during what should have been a routine remote grab. He never found it. Six years later, Inside assembles an international team to search the recliner to find what Chad couldn't. Nine Rising Couch-Surfing Stars To Watch…
Jen See last wrote for The Toast about cycling. She's very sporty. The clutch pedal feels cold under my bare foot, and there’s sand lodged in deep between my toes. I’m pretty sure I have ten of them, but I can only feel two or three. Sky, air, sea, they’re all grey, so much so that it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. The heater in my VW is episodic.
Samantha told me the secret of her country life while we lay sprawled on a picnic blanket at sundown. We were at an outdoor concert in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts. The band weaved their way past picnickers on their way to the concert stage. Strands from a bamboo flute drifted by, snatches of drums, a man playing a moon-shaped lute. We’d both had some wine. “Since I moved here,” Samantha whispered, looking sneaky, “I’ve…
Oh, man, if you want to improve the reputation of snowboarders, suggesting (even in jest) that you should be going 75+ miles an hour and crushing people who have stopped on the slope to wait for a friend to catch up is really not a good way to go about it.
Laura Passin's past work for The Toast has included The Day I Should Have Believed in God, and a celebration of the poet Muriel Rukeyser.
One day, Sir David Attenborough will die. You might know Sir David, or at least you might know his voice: he's the posh British man in your head who ruefully but matter-of-factly narrates the world around you, equally impressed by majestic blue whales and by the humble…
There are few avenues of life in which violence is sanctioned; fewer still in which it is productive and necessary. Working demolition (“demo,” to its initiates) on houses is one of them. This was what I did this summer. Not with plastics explosives or wrecking balls: with screwguns and sledgehammers and crowbars. And after 10 long months of shepherding 11 and 12-year-olds through preadolescent turmoil--through that brief intersection of childhood enthusiasm and pubescent confusion--it felt pretty damn good. Like…
