Tag Archives: nature

Knives: Be Prepared!

If you read “almost any” of the wilderness survival books, you’ll find that they tell you to carry a good fixed-blade knife. The experts recommend the fixed-blade design because they believe it offers a smaller chance of injury — it won’t clamp shut on your fingers. Personally, when I need to travel light on one-day long-distance endurance hikes, I carry a folding multi-tool knife (a Swiss Army knife), but when I’m camping or backpacking, I take along a lightweight fixed-blade tactical knife.

Then, of course, I keep a folding pocket knife in my car and a smaller one on my key chain. Like they say out West, a cowboy’s kid learns to use a knife before he learns to ride a tricycle or pony. They learn to be prepared, and to that end I also carry a headlamp, a miniature flashlight, extra batteries, water, and food, three different ways to start a campfire, a signal mirror, and a first-aid kit.

Reavis Ranch & Hoolie Bacon Photo Galleries

A 19-mile in-and-out day-hike to the old Reavis Ranch in the Superstition Wilderness along a well traveled trail. Click through to the entire post so you can view the galleries.

Hoolie Bacon: Thorns, Sand and Mountain Lion Tracks

Continue reading →

Arizona Slideshow

Here is a slide show of some of the photos I took on hikes in Arizona during 2008 to 2010. If you hover your cursor over a photo, the navigation bar will pop up. If you then click on the square box located at the right-hand edge of the navigation bar, you will see slide show in full-screen mode.

Winter Hiking on the Bruce Trail South of Speyside, Ontario

Click on the thumbnail photos (and then when you are done, click on the full size photos to close).

[Not a valid template]

The Fisheries Turnoff

I was watching David Suzuki’s “One Ocean” on CBC Television last night, and I was again struck by one fisheries biologist’s arrogance–his choice of words, his tone of voice, his meaning. When he spoke of forcing a smile onto his face at public meetings and inquiries, he was not only insulting his audience, he was admitting insincerity. And why would anyone want to cooperate with an arrogant, insincere fisheries biologist?

Fisheries biology is an interesting field of study, but it often attracts (and subsequently recruits) autocratic individuals who as teenagers and young adults failed to muster enough smarts to succeed at jobs requiring higher levels of creativity, originality, and diplomacy.

World Health and Arrogant Ecologists

Science, Ethics, and Abuse

Global Warming and Publish or Perish

Hiking Photos from Bruce Trail and Grand Canyon

Here are a few of the photos I took on my hikes in Arizona and Ontario. I use a small Japanese-made Minolta.

I took the Arizona shot on the Tanner Trail in the Grand Canyon and the Ontario shots on the Beaver Valley and Sydenham sections of the Bruce Trail (Maps 28 and 29 of the Bruce Trail Reference: Edition 25), about 10 km south of Meaford, Ontario. (Did you know that John Muir once lived in Meaford?). Compared to Arizona, the Bruce Trail does not present large elevation changes, but its moss-covered rocks and boulders are extremely slippery.

I have images from other areas in the Grand Canyon and on the Bruce Trail mixed into the slideshow.

Also see:

The Grand Canyon State: Arizona Set to Close and Sell State Parks?

The world flies in and takes a long look at Arizona, the Grand Canyon State (see our Photo Gallery, our Arizona Gallery, and our Grand Canyon Trails Page). And soon after arriving in Phoenix, they fall in love with all the other gems Arizona has to offer: preserved yet accessible desert wilderness areas and wildlife refuges, such as the Lost Dutchman State Park in Apache Junction.

But now Arizona’s lawmakers are preparing to vote on budget cuts that could shut down the entire state parks system by July 1. And that vote in January 2010 might result in the sale of state parks to the highest bidders. That’s right: I’m hearing that once an Arizona state park is closed, it must be sold: Land speculators and developers will mutilate our public gems, our community wilderness. They will restrict access, and Lost Dutchman State Park will become a gated community or a private suburb, with lot and house prices starting at $700,000 or more.

Here’s a group of hikers who will show you how to protest the closure of Arizona’s state parks: visit the Take a Hike message board and web site.

Also see Petition to Save Arizona’s State Parks

World Health and Arrogant Ecologists

We cannot assert that all ecologists and environmentalists are arrogant, but I have encountered quite a few who would have made stronger contributions had they attended compulsory courses in ethics and human kindness. In fact, I believe that many of our professional conservationists have retarded our fight against global warming. If we had replaced them long ago, we would have made more headway in our attempts to introduce preemptive environmental measures.

For example, once when I was discussing the fact that as part of one of my research projects, a rather large group of Seventh Day Adventist fishermen contributed logbooks detailing their catches of salmon, a prominent fisheries ecology professor told me, “Those guys are perverts, the type who climb telephone poles and peep through windows at trailer parks.”

I guess that fisheries ecologist thought of himself as a fighter. But all he was really doing was shooting himself in the foot.

Science, Ethics, and Abuse

Global Warming and Publish or Perish

The Fisheries Turnoff