The LA Times has a nice profile of Billy Goat, a hiker who has finished off 32,000+ miles of hiking, including the Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide Trail, and where he’s best known, the Pacific Crest Trail. I’m thinking about heading for the PCT next summer, so I found this bit pretty interesting: “Each year about 300 people attempt to hike the PCT in one season, generally April to September. Of those, about 60% make it — fewer people than scale Mt. Everest in a year.”
Tag: outdoors
The Best American Science & Nature Writing 2007 (review: 3.5/5)
I found The Best American Science & Nature Writing 2007 when I was out hiking a couple few weeks ago. An Appalachian Trail hiker left it behind, recommending to whoever came by. I snagged it.
Any anthology will have some hits and misses. At least, in contrast with my frustrating experience with Flash Fiction Forward, all of my favorites from this book are available online, and only two of those are behind paywalls. Score. These were the ones I especially liked:
- In Rome’s Basement by Paul Bennett
- Fishering by Brian Doyle (my top pick)
- Cooking for Eggheads by Patricia Gadsby
- Cyber-Neologoliferation by James Gleick
- The Final Frontier by John Horgan
- How to Get a Nuclear Bomb by William Langewiesche
- The Flu Hunter by Michael Rosenwald
- Ruffled Feathers by John Seabrook
- The Rape of Appalachia by Michael Shnayerson
- Delusions of Space Enthusiasts by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Here’s an oldie, but a goodie. An article from Outside magazine about America’s most dangerous wilderness, Angeles National Forest:
The man in charge at headquarters, Michael J. Rogers, insists that the Angeles is the ultimate proving ground for the theory that nature can be saved from humanity’s onslaught. Rogers, who has been forest supervisor since 1990, is an environmental evangelist for whom the glass is always half full Äî even when it’s nearly empty. This forest is not merely a slow-motion apocalypse, he argues (often to members of his own staff), but a laboratory where those who hold the public trust can test themselves against the host of troubles that will eventually confront every park and wilderness area in the country. In the Angeles, however, the future is now.
Maybe this is why, as I linked a while back, L.A. is the best place for writing about nature.
Mark Larson 